Hi, everyone! Welcome back to SemperViernes. As much fun as both doom and gloom are, a couple readers asked for something a little more hopeful, so although I could spend at least one section here talking about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's call to Congress for more A.I. regulation, his launch two days later of an iOS mobile app for ChatGPT, a separate discussion of how Microsoft says that A.I. is showing signs of human reasoning, or the company Sanctuary AI's launch of a 5'7" humanoid general-purpose robot with wiggly fingers that both lifts 55 lbs and dabs in celebration of itself (scroll down within that last link for the one-minute promo video), I thought we might enjoy something a little different: a couple of action plans for issues we face as a society (though they aren't entirely unrelated to tech) and a use case for machine learning that I'll applaud you if you understand fully (I don't).
First
I loved reading the American Psychological Association's new health advisory regarding social media use in adolescence. I think it'll be helpful for any parents or guardians reading, but I also found it interesting for myself as well. I appreciate this document's no-nonsense nature; news articles that summarize findings or quote experts are nice, but I prefer to go to the primary source of research-informed guidelines as much as possible. What I like about the APA's 10 recommendations here is that they're specific, thorough, optimistic, feel plausible to implement, and they're reviewed and approved by a group of professionals as opposed to being espoused by one person who (for instance) just published a book and is doing a media tour. There doesn't seem to be a hidden (monetary) agenda, and though I could be missing something, the APA mostly just seems interested in helping people, so these ideas feel useful. I found their advisory (8-minute read) worthwhile even if only for the precise definition of social media they give—they define social media as "technologically-based applications, platforms, or communication systems using online architecture that promotes asynchronous, unilateral, permanent, public, continually-accessible, social cue-restricted, quantifiable, visually-based, or algorithmic-based social interactions." The "social cue-restricted" part resonates (as does their excellent hyphen usage). Way to go big or go home, APA!
Second
I think that AI will tend to appear in this newsletter more often than not, but I wanted to take a break this week from discussing intense articles about how AI will affect the future, and instead drop a bunch of links in the intro and move on to other topics. I'd like to take a moment to share a Quanta Magazine piece about a fun, niche use of AI, which is to hide messages in plain sight in machine-generated text, audio, image, or video files for use in covert communications. I love reading Quanta because of how delightfully nerdy and in-depth their articles are, and how much my brain has to work whenever I read them (they've also got a stealthy orange reading progress bar at the top of each article, which is rewarding). This article talks about a recent proof of the possibility of perfectly secure steganography, "a way of disguising a secret message within another message" (from Greek words for "covered" + "writing"—same root that gave us "stegosaurus") (cool, though in Land Before Time world I was always more of a fan of Sarah the Triceratops) (I just learned that her name is actually spelled Cera...get it?). I learned from this article that the field of information theory defines the word 'entropy' differently than physics does—here, it's the amount of information in a variable, like the number of bits needed to encode a message. After two read-throughs and a venti latte (I dropped the chocolate syrup this week), I also came to understand about 65% of the concept of a "minimum entropy coupling," which allows a secret message, or ciphertext, to appear "statistically indistinguishable" from a cover text (fake message) when analyzed by machine learning probability models. Or something like that. I usually leave Quanta articles with the same level of comprehension I leave a guided wine tasting with; that is to say, far from perfect, but a bit better than before it began. Poco a poco, right?
Third
I love a good comprehensive, thoughtful, cross-disciplinary action plan with guiding philosophical principles that addresses an interwoven web of pressing societal issues just as much as the next person. You know what I mean? In that spirit, I give you the social connectedness plan from Dr. Vivek Murthy, U.S. Surgeon General. We can also think of it as an anti-loneliness, anti-polarization plan, but I think "social connectedness plan" is a little less bleak. I do think that this plan could appeal to Gen Z (and the rest of us!) for a couple of reasons. First, a lot of students I've worked with share that they're tired of political polarization and demonization of people with different viewpoints. These students were also, of course, isolated at home doing online school during some of their most formative years, so they don't seem to take in-person interactions or quality friend time for granted. It seems, then, that they might 'get it' re: the importance of social connectedness somewhat intuitively, and be perhaps more motivated to act on these suggestions than other generations (like mine) whose coming-of-age was less affected. This document is long; the action plan features general guidelines starting on p.45, and proceeds with industry-tailored ideas until the end of p.66. I'd recommend reading at least those 21 pages (5-10 minutes). I particularly liked the recs under "What Media and Entertainment Industries Can Do," and also found it appropriate that "What Individuals Can Do" was the page most chock-full of suggestions out of any of them (what better way to increase social connectedness than by empowering potentially lonely individuals with lots of ideas?). I genuinely think this campaign, and the scientific research it calls for, could significantly alter our societal trajectory toward enhanced social harmony, well-being, and fulfillment. My favorite quote: "We are called to build a movement to mend the social fabric of our nation." I would add "and world" to that.
