Daily Tech News 7 June 2023

• You've got cancer! Part One: Carbon Health, an organisation with over 100 clinics in the US, is using GPT-4 to generate patient summaries from doctors' notes. (The Register)
  
  Though based on our experience with ChatGPT, it's just as likely to diagnose you with Dutch Elm Disease.
  
  "But I'm not even Dutch!"
  "You are now."
  
  
  
• You've got cancer! Part Two: Patients using Grail's new blood test for cancer turned out to have chosen poorly when over 400 of them received letters telling them they were already dead. (CBS)
  
  "Was that wrong?" said a company spokesman. "Should we not have done that?"

• The SEC is asking for an emergency order to freeze Binance US's financial assets - worldwide. (CNBC)
  
  Yeah, that's going to create a mess if a judge approves it. Wouldn't be at all surprised if it took out one or two more of the smaller banks.
  
  
  
• Sam Altman-Fried says that OpenAI isn't planning on an IPO any time soon because - I'm paraphrasing here - the entire company is an elaborate scam. (Reuters)

  "We have a very strange structure. We have this cap to profit thing," he said.
  OpenAI started off as a non-profit organisation but later created a hybrid "capped-profit" company, that allowed it to raise external funds with a promise that the original non-profit operation still benefits.
  
  "Also, our product is total bullshit. Don't write that down."

  Wouldn't dream of it, Sam.
  
  
  
• Speaking of elaborate scams, Japan has earmarked $107 billion for hydrogen fuel projects. (AP)
  
  Hydrogen is a terrible fuel. Miserable energy density and expensive and troublesome to store and transport.
  
  Unless you turn it into natural gas. Natural gas works pretty well. But most hydrogen comes from natural gas, so that's worse than pointless.
  
  
  
• Millions of hard drives are shredded every year instead of being recycled. (BBC)
  
  Because hard drives are cheap and the class-action lawsuit when someone else ends up with all your customer data is expensive. It's simply not worth the risk for large corporations to recycle the drives.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:11 AM

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