In less than 6 hours after starting on our in-house server, our model generated 40,000 molecules that scored within our desired threshold. In the process, the AI designed not only VX, but also many other known chemical warfare agents that we identified through visual confirmation with structures in public chemistry databases. Many new molecules were also designed that looked equally plausible. These new molecules were predicted to be more toxic, based on the predicted LD50 values, than publicly known chemical warfare agents (Fig. 1). This was unexpected because the datasets we used for training the AI did not include these nerve agents. The virtual molecules even occupied a region of molecular property space that was entirely separate from the many thousands of molecules in the organism-specific LD50 model, which comprises mainly pesticides, environmental toxins and drugs (Fig. 1). By inverting the use of our machine learning models, we had transformed our innocuous generative model from a helpful tool of medicine to a generator of likely deadly molecules.[...]
Without being overly alarmist, this should serve as a wake-up call for our colleagues in the ‘AI in drug discovery’ community. Although some domain expertise in chemistry or toxicology is still required to generate toxic substances or biological agents that can cause significant harm, when these fields intersect with machine learning models, where all you need is the ability to code and to understand the output of the models themselves, they dramatically lower technical thresholds. Open-source machine learning software is the primary route for learning and creating new models like ours, and toxicity datasets9 that provide a baseline model for predictions for a range of targets related to human health are readily available.
A major civil rights group says the Justice Department has more a lot more power than it's using to change the behavior of local police departments. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund wants Attorney General Merrick Garland to suspend grants to local law enforcement until he's sure that no federal taxpayer money is funding police departments that engage in discrimination, according to a letter obtained by NPR ."
"You can often recognize a Victorian home from the street: Its elaborate architectural details, from fanciful trim work to stained glass windows, are a dead giveaway. But Victorian interiors were just as full of decorative flourishes, from luxuriant furniture to ornate molding and plasterwork --- including ceiling medallions ."
"Democrats have long considered Latinos a cornerstone of what I've called their "coalition of transformation," and assumed that more of these voters in the electorate translates to a widening advantage for their party. Trump's performance has introduced slivers of doubt that the equation is that simple. In the near term, some of the key factors that lifted Trump among Latinos could help Biden if he runs again in 2024. But a close examination of last year's results suggests that neither party should be entirely confident about the direction of this huge, but still dimly understood, voting bloc." [ The Atlantic ]
You would be amazed what you could accomplish if you just shut the fuck up and weren't a piece of shit no good motherfucker low life dumb son of a bitch. Have a good day.
Negative advertising is frequent in electoral campaigns, despite its ambiguous effectiveness: Negativity may reduce voters' evaluation of the targeted politician but may have a backlash effect for the attacker. We study the effect of negative advertising in electoral races with more than two candidates with a large‐scale field experiment during an electoral campaign for mayor in Italy and a survey experiment in a fictitious mayoral campaign. In our field experiment, we find a strong, positive spillover effect on the third main candidate (neither the target nor the attacker). This effect is confirmed in our survey experiment, which creates a controlled environment with no ideological components or strategic voting. The negative ad has no impact on the targeted incumbent, has a sizable backlash effect on the attacker, and largely benefits the idle candidate. The attacker is perceived as less cooperative, less likely to lead a successful government, and more ideologically extreme.
How do people view media they come across in everyday life, and what can that tell us about why they do (and do not) trust the news they encounter? In early 2021, the Reuters Institute held a series of focus group discussions and interviews with cross-sections of people on four continents to learn more about the way people think about these matters. They told us about what they liked, what they disliked, and, most importantly, what they found trustworthy and untrustworthy about news, and why. [...]
Familiarity with brands and their reputations offline often shaped how people thought about news content online as well. Across all four countries, when people described what led them to trust or distrust news organisations, many used the term as a kind of shorthand for news sources they were familiar with and their sense of a given brand's reputation (good or bad). Conversations about trust would often lead to more general impressions about things people either liked or disliked about news media, which suggests the boundaries between a news source that is 'trusted' and a news source that is simply 'likeable' are often blurry. Brands can be cues for trust, but also for distrust. Both more trusting and less trusting individuals tended to articulate trust in this way. [...]
Editorial processes and practices of journalism were rarely central to how people thought about trust. Only a small number in each country expressed confidence in their understanding of how journalism works or the decision-making and newsgathering processes that shape how the news is made. Instead, many focused on more stylistic factors or qualities concerning the presentation of news as more tangible signals of perceived quality or reliability. [...]
One reason why actual practices of journalism were less central to how people seemed to think about trust may be because few expressed confidence in their knowledge about what reporting the news actually entails. Instead, they tended to rely on various heuristics or other cues about what might be decent proxies for professionalism and quality. [...]
Previous research in the US has shown considerable limits to the public's knowledge about basic journalistic practices (Media Insight Project 2018). We found similar gaps in understanding, which were often revealed in subtle ways. Study participants would refer, for example, to pop culture references when describing their sense of how the news works. Sticking with Henry (48, man, US), to take one example, when asked if he had a sense of 'what goes on day-to-day in terms of reporting the news', he responded by recalling the Jim Carrey movie Bruce Almighty . 'I'm just picturing how he would show up to a scene and there he'd have his camera crew and everything, and they'd report on something.' [...]
We suggest four areas for research that could accelerate potential solutions aimed at influencing white people's choices and dismantling the system of separate and unequal neighborhoods and schools built over generations.
Yet another policing video has gone viral this week, although you'll be forgiven if you missed it in the midst of its more headline-grabbing counterparts. The cellphone video, which has received more than 5 million views on Twitter, shows no less than six police confronting a group of teenagers in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Their crime? Riding bicycles without a license.
