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How AI can solve healthcare's equity dilemma | Viewpoint

Now, AI needs to be incorporated into patient journeys long before that, merging artificial intelligence and behavioral science not as a black-and- ...

Published on: Jan 22, 2025 13:20

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Medicare Advantage Star ratings have dropped for the third consecutive year, prompting healthcare organizations to realign themselves with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ focus on health equity and personalized care. Traditional methods of patient outreach—such as mailing the same reminders to large populations—fail to account for critical personal factors, including language preference, cultural context, and even the time of day that might produce the best engagement. Rather than relying on one-size-fits-all messaging, the article argues that adopting personalized, AI-driven outreach can significantly improve care quality, reduce costs, and increase patient satisfaction—areas that are especially significant when trying to boost Star ratings. By merging AI with behavioral science, healthcare systems can better meet the unique circumstances of every patient, whether it’s an 80-year-old grandmother or her 50-year-old daughter.

However, the article points out that large language models (LLMs) are only part of the solution for closing the equity gap and motivating actual behavior change. Enter “Large Behavioral Models” (LBMs), which consider social determinants of health—like race, geography, digital access, and nutritional factors—in addition to a patient’s past actions and likely future behaviors. By analyzing these diverse data points, LBMs can deploy the right message at the right time, driving longitudinal engagement and better health outcomes. This shift not only promotes equity but also aligns with the broader evolution in healthcare, where AI’s real promise lies in personalized, context-aware interactions that help both patients and health organizations thrive.

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Researchers open source Sky-T1, a 'reasoning' AI model that can be trained for less than $450

So-called reasoning AI models are becoming easier — and cheaper — to develop. On Friday, NovaSky, a team of researchers based out of UC Berkeley's ...

Published on: Jan 22, 2025 13:20

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Researchers from UC Berkeley’s Sky Computing Lab have unveiled Sky-T1-32B-Preview, a new open source “reasoning model” that rivals an earlier version of OpenAI’s o1 on math- and coding-focused benchmarks. Significantly, Sky-T1 reportedly cost less than $450 to train—a stark contrast to the millions of dollars often spent on comparable large-scale models not long ago. The team credits synthetic training data for helping cut down expenses; Sky-T1’s initial dataset was generated by Alibaba’s QwQ-32B-Preview, and then refined with OpenAI’s GPT-4o-mini. Training the 32-billion-parameter Sky-T1 took only 19 hours on a cluster of eight Nvidia H100 GPUs, illustrating both the growing affordability and rapid development pace for advanced AI projects.

Though Sky-T1 outperforms the preview version of o1 on complex math and coding tests, it lags behind o1 in a separate domain of graduate-level science questions, and also trails OpenAI’s more polished GA release of o1. Nonetheless, Sky-T1 stands as a promising step toward fully open source models with robust reasoning capabilities—models that can “fact-check” themselves and potentially avoid errors that often plague conventional AI. The Sky Computing Lab team plans to keep refining their approach, working on ways to boost both efficiency and performance for their future reasoning models.

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While Los Angeles Burns, AI Fans the Flames | Truthout

Artificial intelligence is a water-guzzling industry hastening future climate crises from California's own backyard.

Published on: Jan 22, 2025 13:20

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Wildfires in Los Angeles County have claimed lives and destroyed thousands of structures, prompting renewed scrutiny of California’s water management and conservation efforts. Former President Trump used the crisis to spread misinformation about a nonexistent “water restoration declaration,” falsely suggesting that Governor Gavin Newsom’s policies were to blame for empty fire hydrants. In reality, local water storage tanks were depleted by firefighters’ heavy demand at lower elevations, and hurricane-force winds also hampered aerial water drops. Though Trump’s accusations are largely political grandstanding, the situation underscores California’s severe vulnerability to climate change-fueled disasters—where heat waves, droughts, and wildfires grow more devastating by the year.

Meanwhile, another looming threat to the state’s limited water supply is the rapid expansion of data centers designed to meet the growing demand for AI. These massive facilities can use millions of gallons of water per day to cool their servers, with some projections indicating that AI-driven data centers could soon outpace the emissions of all California cars. Companies are flocking to water-stressed regions like Imperial Valley and Los Angeles County, lured by plentiful solar and wind resources as well as favorable tax incentives. But local communities, armed with examples of successful pushback in other states, are increasingly resisting these developments, fearful of intensifying competition for water. With the climate crisis already straining California’s reservoirs and rivers, the intersection of AI infrastructure and disaster management reveals a critical need to rethink the state’s resource priorities.

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Media Execs, Tech Vets And Legal Experts Debate AI's Impact At CES - Deadline

AI was an unavoidable topic at CES last week, with entertainment industry figures vacillating between utopian optimism and deep-seated mistrust.

Published on: Jan 22, 2025 13:20

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AI was an omnipresent theme at CES, with panel discussions and keynotes putting a spotlight on both the promise and perils of the technology. In Hollywood, many creatives remain wary of generative AI and its potential to erode job security or diminish the value of human talent—especially after the WGA and SAG-AFTRA fought for new AI protections during their 2023 strikes. Yet key industry voices also highlighted AI’s upside. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang showcased breakthroughs like Blackwell for PC graphics and autonomous vehicles, while Delta and Sphere offered glimpses of how AI might enable more efficient planning and immersive experiences. Even so, SAG-AFTRA national executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland captured a widespread sentiment, describing AI as both “a tool and also an existential threat,” reflecting the stark divide between seeing AI as creative support or a direct competitor to human artistry.

Legal experts and major tech figures likewise weighed in, underscoring the need for balanced guardrails. Lawyers cautioned that the courts may eventually have to intervene on issues like deepfakes and data ownership, while others argued for a more optimistic, measured approach, pointing out that new tech—from color film to digital video—often sparks concern before eventually creating more opportunities. Former Lucasfilm and Apple exec Richard Kerris drew parallels to past disruptions, acknowledging that AI will inevitably shift employment patterns but also open new avenues for creativity and innovation. The prevailing consensus at CES, then, was that AI’s future in entertainment will be shaped by both regulation and collaboration—one that preserves human expertise while recognizing the technology’s transformative power.