Andrea Chittle MD MPH CCFP
@andreachittle.medsky.social
Passionate about public health, with a focus on demystifying The Great Mimicker (syphilis). Settler in Treaty 3 Territory. Opinions are my own. (she | her)
"It’s as if we launched a war against nature, and that has turned place after place into something that resembles a war zone. The climate movement is a peace movement, a movement to end this war and its casualties. ...summer was an immaterial treasure and joy that belonged to all of us."
You cannot use a software system designed to make things up as research. You cannot rely on it to generate ideas, or translate text, or write for you, or check your grammar or spelling. If you do use it, you will have your moment. 100% fucking guaranteed. It will probably be really, really bad ⏱️
This is a story about an over-hyped technology and the human worker who now functions as an ‘accountability sink’ [1] for the tech’s predictable, egregious and embarrassing errors. [1] @doctorow.pluralistic.net
Marc-André Gagnon@m-a-gagnon.bsky.social · 6d ago
Canadians are broadly skeptical of AI—as they should be—even if that is not reflected by our media or governments. For AI to actually serve the public interest, we must move slower and with greater democratic oversight of the AI industry. Read more: www.policyalternatives.ca/news-researc...
Think twice: A citizen’s guide to artificial intelligence in Canada | CCPA
Canadians need to think twice about the promise and inevitability of artificial intelligence and be prepared to push back on the AI industry
policyalternatives.ca
In many contexts, AI is a solution in search of a problem. AI companies and governments promote AI adoption for its own sake rather than offering clear evidence for added value.
‘There may be productive, pro-social applications of the various tools that fall under the AI banner, but we must approach AI development & adoption with a clearer sense of what problems these tools actually solve & what risks they entail for individuals & society alike.’ - @policyalternatives.ca
Hadrian@hadrianmk.bsky.social · 2w agoCanada is trading real and immediate harms for speculative long-term benefits. We need to think twice about the race to adopt AI indiscriminately across every sector of society and the economy. Major new @policyalternatives.ca report on AI: www.policyalternatives.ca/news-researc...
The status quo is untenable. Guelph Lake, Ontario. July 15, 2016.
The fires in Ontario - like so many others - demonstrating viscerally how climate change perpetuates the displacement and dispossession of Indigenous peoples, who have least contributed to emissions and over and over again put their bodies on the line to prevent fossil fuel development.
Luke LeBrun@lukelebrun.ca · 3w agoThese images of First Nations community members evacuating Collins, Ontario on motorboats are absolutely surreal www.facebook.com/reel/1548244...
The Weather Network has a helpful map that lets Ontario residents track the plumes of death clouds fanning across the province this week
‘There’re no rules for Big Tech. It’s harder to open up a hot dog stand than it is to open an AI data center’ - Saul Levin, speaking on @techwontsave.us about the broad-based & growing popular opposition to these rapacious monstrosities
Tech Won’t Save Us@techwontsave.us · last mo.Across the United States, communities are uniting in opposition to data centers to power generative AI. This week Saul Levin joins @parismarx.com to talk about those fights and how they center on tangible issues that bring people together. Full ep: techwontsave.us/episode/334_...
tell me again how the water usage is typical actually
Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler.myatproto.social · 3mo ago“officials discovered two industrial-scale water hookups feeding a data center campus located 20 miles south of downtown Atlanta. One water connection had been installed without the utility’s knowledge, and the other was not linked to the company’s account and therefore wasn’t being billed.”
Duolingo has created a disturbingly thirsty chess bot. Contrary to the ad’s claim, the time my teen spends engaging with this bot *is* time entirely wasted. And the matter of time lost only begins to express why it is *not* ‘worth it’. Parenting in this moment is an absolute minefield.
‘At its core, anti-trans sports policy and legislation like this isn’t about protecting women’s rights, it’s about rolling them back.’ @melwoods.me
Xtra @xtramagazine.com · 4mo agoIn banning trans women from the Olympics and mandating strict gender testing, the IOC just set women’s rights overall back
Maybe war is a God And we're just super superstitious It's gonna take a lot of blood 'Cause boy, are we religious - Jesse Welles
Imagine believing that using text-generating machines to perform clinical assessments & replace expert advice from real, qualified humans could improve health care. Such machines will deskill experts & surely kill. And you can bet the machines & their makers won’t be held accountable.
Emily M. Bender@emilymbender.bsky.social · 6mo agoMystery AI Hype Theater 3000 Episode 71, in which @alexhanna.bsky.social and I meet up for a “curb consult” and diagnose “A Bad Case of Hype-itis”: www.buzzsprout.com/2126417/epis... If only Big Tech were bound by the Hippocratic Oath.
TL;DR/Moral of the Story/Whatever THIS is what MSFT and others are pushing. It's not a value add. It's a broken, planet destroying plagiarism engine built on theft. And now, it just makes unprompted changes to things we're responsible for. Why exactly? Reasons, I guess. Cast it into the sun.
Unexpectedly, it’s @science.org heralding the arrival of the post-science era, legitimizing & obfuscating what LLMs are and do by publishing quotes claiming there’s such a thing as ‘AI-generated knowledge’ and asserting ‘AI [will be] doing a lot of research’. No, to all of this.
Science Magazine@science.org · 8mo agoAt most scientific publications, papers co-authored by #AI are not welcome. At a new open platform called aiXiv, they are embraced. https://scim.ag/4pIg60T
‘LLMs are structurally indifferent to truth’ - @anthonymoser.com
Miles Klee 🦉@milesklee.bsky.social · 8mo agoAcademics and technologists are sounding the alarm about a growing crisis in scholarship as we know it: AI-generated citations of nonexistent papers that have infested real journals. Despite being fake, the sources are widely assumed to be authentic the more they appear in published literature.
Let's not immediately assume AI is the solution to every problem, especially in health, where AI cause harm and has the potential to amplify existing health inequities. Let’s listen to communities first.
MedPage Today@medpagetoday.com · 8mo ago"It's time for health organizations to center community priorities. AI may not be a part of those -- and that's OK." Read the #OpEd from primary care physician and researcher Oni Blackstock, MD, MHS, at: https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/118893?trw=no
Something is terribly wrong. Canada needs interventions to safeguard first-food systems. Infants has a right to food, and families have a right to feed.
Christine Saulnier (she/her)@csaulnier.bsky.social · 9mo ago@franklyless.bsky.social raises the alarm about families needing more support to afford essentials as they “forage on Facebook” for infant formula. She also said the federal government could consider nationalizing production.
‘What makes AI so compelling is not simply faith in technology but the way it suggests we can improve medicine by leapfrogging the difficult work of structural change to confront disease-causing inequality, corporate interests and oligarchic power.’ - @eric-reinhart.com
Cleaner air isn't a personal health choice, it's something that needs the broad mandate of the state to accomplish. But we'll never get there as a society (despite the tech being relatively simple), because we've been brainwashed by a neoliberal health ideology that's centred on individual choices.
James Andrew Smith@drsmith.bsky.social · 11mo agoPutting clean air infrastructure into the built environment (in schools, daycare, long term care homes, shopping centres, offices, airplanes, buses, taxis, cruise ships...) is more important than ever. Because giving people the "choice" has led to lower vaccination rates and a refusal to mask.
This is why everything in public health seems to boil down to "raising awareness" of healthy vs unhealthy choices. But individual awareness is meaningless without robust public health infrastructure. Everything from air quality to food to physical activity is heavily shaped by societal factors.
We've had decades now to witness the effects of "raising awareness" on public health issues that are not individually controllable (eg: food deserts). The pandemic should have made clear that "individualized public health" is an oxymoron. When will we admit that this is a failed approach?
Seems very timely "What normalization does is transform the morally extraordinary into the ordinary. It makes us able to tolerate what was once intolerable by making it seem as if this is the way things have always been." — Jason Stanley. How Fascism Works en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Fas...
‘The key thing is this is not about all of humanity creating these threats. It is not about human nature. It is about small groups who bring out the worst in us, competing for profit and power and covering all [the risks] up.’ @dpcarrington.bsky.social
George Monbiot@georgemonbiot.bsky.social · last yr.For thousands of years, we have been parasitised, exploited and destroyed by elites. Our survival depends on overthrowing them. Fascinating article by @dpcarrington.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/environment/...
