Health care workers face fatigue as they deal with more COVID-19 patients – News 12 Bronx

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Jan 11, 2022, 4:11amUpdated 3h ago

By: News 12 Staff

COVID-19-related hospitalizations are up in New Jersey. There are currently 6,075 COVID patients in New Jersey hospitals, according to state data.

Almost 80 of these patients are at Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck. At the height of the pandemic, there were 250 patients on ventilators. Now there are only five. But it is up from last month, which is not the direction hospital officials were hoping to see things go.

The surge comes as health care workers are running out of steam and patience.

What we saw in November was single-digit patients, says Michele Acito, executive vice president and chief nursing officer. After the holidays, we increased to 94 patients. Very concerning.

The health care workers are taking care of more patients now than they have seen since the early days of the pandemic. Acito says her staff is having a hard time.

Here we go again with our third wave and people are really getting theyre getting tired, exhausted, working harder, working longer and its becoming difficult, she says.

Too difficult for many who are burned out and not worth the risk for others who left the industry. Health care workers are also getting sick with the Omicron variant, leaving fewer of them to take care of more patients.

While you see no sense of urgency in public, we see a tremendous overwhelming in our hospitals, says Debbie White, president of HPAE, the union representing 13,000 New Jersey medical workers.

White says what her members really want are the resources they need to do their jobs. They also want the public to do their part in slowing the spread.

Take those measures. Do the things we did in the beginning masking while indoors, dont hang out in big crowds, stay safe, says White. Do those things we did in the first wave. Thats the only thing that will stop or at least slow the spread.

Health care workers are also asking for patience as they deal with shortages and larger hospital populations.

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Health care workers face fatigue as they deal with more COVID-19 patients - News 12 Bronx

Philly ER doctor: Omicron wave threatens to overpower exhausted health-care workers | Expert Opinion – The Philadelphia Inquirer

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There is a saying in emergency medicine: anyone, anything, anytime. We are the safety net of the health-care system, the first in line and sometimes the last resort.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Ive been amazed by the resilience and dedication of my fellow health-care workers. We have had to reassess, reorganize, and recreate our emergency department to handle a new version of a disease we didnt entirely understand, to make resources stretch just a little further. But the omicron wave is the first time Ive felt in danger of being overwhelmed. For the U.S. health-care system, omicron isnt mild.

Throughout the pandemic, we have handled surges, in both the number of patients and severity of illness. But coming on the heels of the delta wave and shared COVID-19 fatigue, this wave threatens to overpower exhausted health-care workers.

READ MORE: One year on the front lines: Philly's essential workers check in

Unlike earlier in the pandemic, I am now a patient as well as a physician. At 39 weeks pregnant, I wonder each day if tomorrow will be worse. Is it as challenging in labor and delivery as it is here in the emergency room? When I deliver this baby, will there be enough nurses, a room for me, and a doctor to catch her? What if, God forbid, something happens and I need to go to the emergency room? Today I am the physician in triage, apologizing to sick patients for the long wait while trying to manage the waiting room. Tomorrow, could I be one of them?

Still, I am hopeful. Learning to manage a new disease has brought with it an unending firehose of new information. Every day new helpful data emerges, new papers are published, new announcements are made. Knowing everything I possibly can about this disease is the first step toward being able to manage it and fight back. There have been dazzling scientific advancements with new vaccines and new medications, and frequently changing guidance around their use, but one of the early lessons has stood the test of time: basic infection prevention tools do work.

Masks, personal protective equipment, clean ventilated air, access to testing, and quarantine and isolation protocols are the cornerstones of strategy to control any infectious disease. If I am seeing a patient who I think may have COVID-19, I follow our safety protocols. I wear an N95 mask, eye protection, a gown, and gloves. This protection has yet to fail me.

Isolation of those known to be ill is another tried and true tactic in infection control. Previously, these patients were isolated in certain areas of the ER. This meant when I wasnt in their rooms, I could take off my mask, breathe, have a sip of water, and change into a surgical mask for a while. I could trust our safety protocols.

But when I go to work now, almost everything has changed. The hospital is full, so patients who are sick with COVID-19 or with any other ailment are waiting longer in the emergency room. Luckily, fewer COVID-19 patients are severely ill compared with previous waves, but many still are, and they arrive in an unending stream.

So now my N95 never comes off, not even to take a sip of water. Now, texts are coming in about new infections not just in patients but in my colleagues, too. We are the front line, and we want to provide every patient with timely, compassionate, and thorough care. Watching people in need of care wait for hours breaks us in a thousand tiny ways. We want to be there for our patients. We want to have the space, the time, and the resources, to protect not only them but also ourselves.

READ MORE: COVID-19 surge has overwhelmed some Pa. hospitals and now their workers are getting sick, too

And, more than anything, Ive wanted to protect this baby. Ive carried her through this surge, and as I come into the hospital to deliver her, I look forward to her life on the other side of this incredibly challenging period. I remain hopeful for better days ahead.

Efrat R. Kean is an emergency medicine physician at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. She has most recently been leading Jefferson Healths COVID-19 Rapid Response Teams as part of Pennsylvanias Regional Congregate Care Assistance Teams.

Editors note: Dr. Kean delivered a healthy baby girl just prior to the publication of this piece.

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Philly ER doctor: Omicron wave threatens to overpower exhausted health-care workers | Expert Opinion - The Philadelphia Inquirer

County seeks to expand mental health care for those facing incarceration – Austin Monitor

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Tuesday, January 11, 2022 by Seth Smalley

Nearly 20percent of inmates booked into Travis County jails in September 2021 needed mental health treatment, but a month after their incarceration, only a third of them were receiving the needed treatment.

That was the conclusion reached byDr. Steve Strakowski, associate vice president for regional mental health at Dell Medical School, who examined the planning process for clinical and legal care for individuals who interact with the countys criminal justice and mental health systems.

Weve struggled for years to try and figure out how to keep people whose main problem is either undiagnosed or poorly treated mental health issues out of our jails,Commissioner Brigid Shea told Strakowski at a discussion last Tuesday. We havent been successful. Weve tried all kinds of different approaches so I appreciate you stepping up.

Strakowski found that the systems that usually handle these kinds of patients are currently overwhelmed. In November, 74 people were on the waitlist for the Austin State Hospital and the average wait for admission was 92 days.

Throughout this time, there have been ongoing efforts locally to try to resolve this challenge of managing people who are ending up in jail or the criminal justice system, who need mental health care, some of whom almost certainly would have been better managed outside the criminal justice system, Strakowski said. Unfortunately we just havent been able to get these efforts aligned in order to create some significant forward movement. And so thats really what were proposing to try to organize and do today.

The expected timeline for project planning is six to eight months. Committees are being established, and the vision, mission and core principles of the project will be ready before the end of February. Strakowski expects the working group to present its findings and recommendations to commissioners by August.

County Judge Andy Brown said, Im excited about the possibility that the steering committee can help shape our common vision, so that we can really thoughtfully invest in people and services in this community and build the mental and behavioral health system that we really need to prevent people from entering our jail system.

We do have a lot of resources, a lot of people interested in this field, Commissioner Margaret Gmez added. We need something like this to kind of bring everything together, not under anybody else but together so we can touch every part of the community with these services.

Editors Note: Andy Brown is on the board of the Capital of Texas Media Foundation, the parent nonprofit of theAustin Monitor.

Photo by Larry D. Moore, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The Austin Monitors work is made possible by donations from the community. Though our reporting covers donors from time to time, we are careful to keep business and editorial efforts separate while maintaining transparency. A complete list of donors is available here, and our code of ethics is explained here.

There are so many important stories we don't get to write. As a nonprofit journalism source, every contributed dollar helps us provide you more coverage. Do your part by donating to the nonprofit that funds the Monitor.

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County seeks to expand mental health care for those facing incarceration - Austin Monitor

Health care workers brave bitter cold temperatures at testing sites in Milwaukee – WDJT

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MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) - Health care workers braved the cold Monday, Jan. 10 to test people for COVID-19 as testing begins to taper off in some areas.

Despite those single-digit temps, health care workers stood outside all day Monday to make sure everyone who needed a test got one.

"We have a tent that we can come in, a warming tent, and the cars move through pretty quickly through here, so it's not too bad," Certified Nursing Assistant Louise Noelle said.

While testing still remains high, Nick Tomaro with the Milwaukee Health Department said it is beginning to taper off. Since last Thursday, testing at the three city of Milwaukee sites has dropped off 25 percent.

"We have obviously tried everything we can for staff. Parkas, hot hands, gloves, we have heated areas inside our building. Can't say enough about the staff, they're working really, really hard," Tomaro said. "I think it has to do with the holidays to a certain extent. I think there's a lot of factors for people coming in for testing around the holidays -- trying to be safe, getting together with family, some people traveling."

Summit Clinical Labs in New Berlin is also seeing a drop-off on testing, but staffing has become an issue.

"We are down, about 15 percent of our workforce is sick. We're just like any other workplace. We're having the same issues as everyone else, so it is kind of crazy having the added demand with rest of the workforce," co-owner Faisal Ahmed-Yahia said.

He said Monday saw shorter lines than last week. He expects to test about 200 fewer people.

"I think it was just a perfect storm of omicron and then the holidays, and now the holidays are starting to taper off, people that have had exposures and what not," Ahmed said.

If you do get tested at one of the city of Milwaukee testing sites, the city said it is quicker to pre-register before you go.

Excerpt from:

Health care workers brave bitter cold temperatures at testing sites in Milwaukee - WDJT

Steward Health Care Week 22 high school star athletes of the week – Deseret News

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Boys Basketball

Rex Sunderland, Davis (Sr.)

Defending 6A state champions Davis hasnt let up this season as it sits at a perfect 13-0 and the steady play of experienced guard Rex Sunderland has been one of the big reasons why.

So far this season hes averaging 15.4 points, 4.5 rebounds, 4.6 assists and 4.5 steals. The only category he doesnt lead Davis is in rebound.

He leads 6A in steals and ranks sixth in steals.

Last week in Davis 54-48 region-opening victory over Layton he was red shot shooting as he scored a career-high 30 points.

Rex is our playmaker on both offense and defense. He leads the team in steals and scoring. He has developed into an amazing defensive player. He is also amazing off the dribble offensively. He breaks the defense down off the dribble and distributes the ball to make the correct basketball play. He is all this and remains an incredible teammate, said Davis coach Chad Sims.

Tina Njike, Skyline (Jr.)

A first team all-stater last year, junior Tina Njike has picked up right where she left off this season.

Njike ranks in the top 10 in 5A in scoring (16.0 ppg), rebounds (11.6 rpg) and blocks (2.1 bpg). Shes recorded a double-double in six games so far this season.

Last week in Skylines first two region games of the year, she recorded 13 points in a 58-47 win over Brighton and then three nights later scored 19 points as the Eagles rolled past Park City 74-35.

Tina is an unbelievable athlete who works as hard or harder than anyone in the gym. She brings a vocal presence and a great attitude. She wants to get better, but more importantly, she wants her teammates to get better too because she understands that a team will always beat an individual. I have been the luckiest coach in the state, getting to work with her and learn from her, I wish her the best this year and next. She is a force to be reckoned with, said Skyline coach Sam White.

Tobler Dotson, Cedar (Sr.)

Tobler Dotson has enjoyed a great senior season so far, but the best could still be to come.

Heading into the final month of the season, Dotson owns a top three 4A time in six different individual events and the best and a 4A-best time in three.

Tobler trains with unrelinquished determination, refusing to put in any less than his best. He has created a hardworking and uplifting culture at Cedar High School, said Cedar City assist coach Garrett Dotson.

Dotson owns the best time in 4A in the 200 individual medley (2:01.20), 100 butterfly (54.40) and 100 breaststroke (1:00.18). At state last year he finished second in the 200 IM and 100 breaststroke. The swimmer who edged him in both of those races is swimming in another classification as Dotson will head into the state tournament as a swimmer to beat in several events.

Dotsons 100 breaststroke time this season ranks in the top 10 in the entire state.

Kaylee Coats, Green Canyon (Sr.)

Kaylee Coats is tearing up the pool in 4A this year and will be one of the swimmers to beat when the state tournament rolls around next month.

Tobler owns the top time in 4A in four events this season and the second best time in a fifth event. Her 4A-best events are 200 individual medley (2:16.75), 50 freestyle (25.46), 100 freestyle (55.49) and 500 freestyle (5:32.88). She is the defending state champion in the 500 freestyle, and was the runner-up a year ago in the 200 freestyle.

Kaylee is an awesome swimmer because she works hard, has a great attitude, is a great teammate and always exhibits great sportsmanship. She is always complimenting and encouraging her competition which is rare. Kaylee is always eager to learn and never backs down from a challenge, said Green Canyon coach John Kane.

Coats 200 IM time ranks in the top 10 in the entire state this season.

Dillon Dick, Uintah (Sr.)

A state runner-up last year, Dillon Dick is having a great senior season as he looks to get over the last individual hurdle thats eluding him.

Last week at the Tournament of Champions at Uintah High School, Dick dominated the field at 150 pounds as he rolled to the individual title improving his overall record this season to 26-3.

Dillon has always been a talented wrestler but this year he has really focused on improving areas of his wrestling that are not as strong. It has been impressive how much he has improved this year as a senior and his hard work and focus have been phenomenal, said Uintah coach Phillip Keddy.

Dick has been invited to participate in the Utah All-Star Duals at UVU this week for the second straight season.

Grace Holman, Juab (Jr.)

In her first year competing at the high school level, Juab junior Grace Holman is proving herself to be a very good wrestler.

Last week at the Tournament of Champions at Uintah High School, Holman pinned all three of her opponents to finish first at the 120-pound bracket. She also finished first this season at the Days of Thunder Tournament at Desert Hills High School and the Paul Williamson Memorial tournament in Parowan.

This week shes been invitation to participate in the Utah All-Star Duals at UVU.

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Steward Health Care Week 22 high school star athletes of the week - Deseret News

CIOs plan big investments in EHR optimization and pop health IT – Healthcare IT News

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The electronic health record is the foundational piece of health information technology for most hospitals and health systems.

Chief information officers and other health IT leaders depend on the data from their deployed record systems, and most keep EHR optimization top of mind each budget season.

Population health management platforms are another essential technology, and depend on finely-tuned EHRs to work optimally.

More CIOs are investing in population health systems in conjunction with their clinical teams to help keep patients healthy while managing the quality and cost imperatives of value-based care.

Despite the various pronouncements over the years of a new "post-EHR" era, ongoing operation of electronic health records and pop health tools still demand significant spending. But how much investment? And where should those dollars be allocated?

For the fifth installment in Healthcare IT News' feature series, "Health IT Investment: The Next Five Years," we asked eight health IT leaders to discuss their spending plans as they look toward the near-term future of EHRs and pop health.

This ongoing series offers in-depth interviews with CIOs and other technology leaders to learn about the priorities they set with their investments in six categories: AI and machine learning; interoperability; telehealth, connected health and remote patient monitoring; cybersecurity; electronic health records and population health; and precision medicine and emerging technology.

Click here to access all the features currently available.

The eight health IT leaders we spoke with for this installment are:

The massive Providence will complete its journey to an all-Epic EHR environment this quarter.

"EHR is only step one of 10," Moore said. "So how do we optimize that environment? How do we simplify the experience for caregivers? How do we get better insights from patients? How do we use the standard EHR? The EHR helps us act as a single health system versus a collection of 51 hospitals. And so we will evolve there.

B.J. Moore, Providence

"And then for population health, we've got these foundational items in place, so population health will continue to be a focus," he continued. "I don't own population health, only the foundational pieces that my team provides to support that initiative. But I know we're increasing the investment in population health work."

"We are just beginning to dip our toe in the water of population health as it hasn't been a priority with our population or payers thus far," said Mistretta of Virginia Hospital Center. "Most of our primary care practices already are designated PCMH with key players, but the real push now is to coordinate care from the practice to the hospital and back to the practice.

"We recently hired a population health coordinator who will have primary responsibilities to monitor and place high-risk patients with social services and coordinate follow-up care as appropriate," he added.

Mike Mistretta, Virginia Hospital Center

From the EHR perspective, the organization will continue to build out social determinants of health and implement focused disease registries for those it wishes to prioritize.

"We also are starting to really dive into health maintenance campaigns and starting to examine the development of specific disease registries," Mistretta said. "We still have a lot of work to do to put this information once gathered into an operational workflow so it becomes meaningful.

"Selling this type of care again hasn't been hard once we define a business case, but it remains to be seen how deep we will be able to dive into pop health without a well-structured case," he continued. "We do see this as a growth opportunity as we expand our ambulatory services in the coming years that can possibly double our practice volumes in the next five years with the right business case. Right now it is still a little early to tell exactly where this is going to go in our market."

Among the various training, mentorship and fellowship programs Regenstrief Institute takes part in and leads, the institute and the Indiana University Fairbanks School of Public Health are home to the Biomedical Informatics and Data Science Research Training Program in public and population health informatics, funded by the National Library of Medicine.

"The specific Regenstrief-FSPH program is known as the Indiana Training Program in Public and Population Health Informatics," said Grannis of Regenstrief Institute. "The highly regarded program prepares graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to work in a broad spectrum of entities in the healthcare industry and academia, as well as for local, state and federal public health departments.

Dr. Shaun Grannis, Regenstrief Institute

"These trainees fill a need for informaticians who can design, validate and implement solutions for organizations key to the maintenance and improvement of human health," he added.

The information that exists in EHRs can be hugely helpful with population health.

"We are invested in making it accessible and useful to clinicians and to administrators who make decisions critical to provision of the best care possible," he said. "For example, our Health Dart application gathers relevant data and displays it for the provider to aid in decision making and free up more time to be spent with patients.

"Regenstrief also is working to train the next generation of doctors in the use of EHRs," he added. "Medical students get very little hands-on experience with the technology, yet it is a large part of everyday workflow. The Regenstrief Teaching EMR allows students to obtain realistic experience with health IT. The program is in use at 12 schools around the country, and we hope to expand that reach."

In past years, Penn Medicine has made significant investments in the design, build and deployment of its integrated electronic health record for the inpatient, ambulatory and home care environments.

"This investment already has enabled population health efforts and positioned the organization to further advance its value-based care initiatives," said Restuccia of Penn Medicine. "Going forward, we will look to further enhance these capabilities and use our advanced data analytics platform to identify and address areas of clinical opportunity."

Michael Restuccia, Penn Medicine

Kramer of OhioHealth believes their AI, interoperability, virtual health, digital outreach and analytics all are part of their EHR/population health strategy.

"Of the 17 models that are part of our AI program, four of them will contribute to identifying patients at risk," he explained. "These have become foundational tools for payers. They will become foundational for health systems working to identify risk and clinical care opportunities.

Dr. J. Michael Kramer, OhioHealth

"Examples that we are working on include risk of ED or hospitalization, risk of readmission, no-show, and identification of complex chronic conditions for care," he added.

South Shore Health has made significant investments in electronic health records and population health platforms.

"Like most organizations, we need to ensure that we have seamless solutions that work well together," said Babachicos of South Shore Health. "We also need to ensure these tools offer great patient engagement alternatives and that they can be customized to suit our needs while providing interoperability with the major electronic health record system.

Cara Babachicos, South Shore Health

"The key question over the next few years will be how to leverage the population health systems to understand our patients and use these systems as a mechanism to proactively reach out to the patients in new ways appropriate for the support of their care," she added.

Hocks at Sanford Health says they are focused on keeping people healthy, well and out of the hospital by providing patients with innovative services to improve their health and manage chronic conditions.

"We have partnerships with technology vendors to help our providers coordinate care across clinics and medical facilities and to connect our patients with community resources and social services that support health and well-being outside of the hospital and clinic settings," he said.

Matt Hocks, Sanford Health

"Technology advances in both hardware and software are in many respects the backbone to providing high-quality care to patients in rural communities," he continued. "For example, because of the digital infrastructure we have in place, Sanford providers can deliver behavioral health services to people living in remote areas who otherwise would need to travel up to three hours one way just to see a specialist."

Sanford Health also is exploring new technology that would allow clinicians to use two-way texting to routinely check-in with patients with chronic conditions. This would be available to all patients, regardless of their ability to own or use a smartphone.

A proactive, coordinated approach to managing population health is a critical element of Ascension's strategic plan, which accelerates its work to deliver improved health outcomes for the individuals and communities it serves.

"Our clinical, technology and experience teams have been working together to lay the foundation for a holistic, system-wide solution for population health, and we will continue to make significant investments in this area," said Desai of Ascension.

"Among other things, we moved our data to the cloud to make it easier to access and collate to give us insights into our patients' care needs," he continued. "We are implementing a care coordination platform to enable performance analytics to help identify groups and needs within defined populations, allowing for program creation as well as expertly coordinate and manage the care of these defined populations."

The organization also is reimagining its interoperability strategy to ensure it both understands where patients have been and what happens across the continuum.

"Our customer relationship management system will serve as our engagement engine, integrating with both the care coordination platform and the electronic health record systems to both notify clinicians of care gaps and nudge patients with outreach," he said.

"We are strengthening our analytics capabilities in stratification and risk assessment of our population, payer quality and risk adjustment to better understand the medical trends and continuity of care to better optimize the care delivery for the population," he concluded.

Twitter:@SiwickiHealthITEmail the writer:bsiwicki@himss.orgHealthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.

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CIOs plan big investments in EHR optimization and pop health IT - Healthcare IT News

United Way, UPMC, community partners thank health-care workers – Williamsport Sun-Gazette

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RALPH WILSON/Sun-GazetteHundreds of luminarias, above, lit the front lawn of UPMC Williamsport as part of the Lights of Hope celebration on Friday. The event was a collaboration of UPMC Williamsport, Lycoming County United Way and Sojourner Truth Ministries to celebrate the hope of the new year.

Luminarias glowing at dusk across the snow-swept front lawn of UPMC Williamsport sent a message of hope as the COVID-19 pandemic enters a new year.

The 1000 lights are also a means of giving thanks to the many health-care workers who have responded in time of need across the community.

I witness hope coming to fruition, Williamsport Mayor Derek Slaughter told the few who braved unforgiving cold and brisk winds to gather for the Lights of Hope Celebration late Friday afternoon.

The mayor extended condolences to those who have lost family members and friends to COVID-19, while thanking the health-care providers who have put in long hours to care for patients in the midst of the pandemic.

Again, I want to say thank you, he said.

Ron Reynolds, president, UPMC Muncy and Lock Haven Hospitals, said the resolve, resiliency and sacrifices of health-care staff are indeed signs of hope.

UPMC personnel, he noted, are prepared and adaptable while working in state-of-the-art facilities.

He vowed a commitment to discipline and vigilance by UPMC will continue.

Ron Frick, president of the Lycoming County United Way, borrowing a quote from George Washington Carver, said, Where there is no vision, there is no hope.

The United Way has been recognizing health-care workers at UPMC with various events.

In late December, UPMC employees were able to pick up free coffee at several local restaurants.

Frick noted the support UPMC has given to United Way over the years.

The health of the community is essential, he said. Think of the value of our community.

Fighting for the health of everyone who lives here is a core mission of the United Way, according to Frick.

Angelique Labadie-Cihanowyz, executive director of Sojourner Truth Ministries, gave a prayer of thanks to all UPMC staff.

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United Way, UPMC, community partners thank health-care workers - Williamsport Sun-Gazette

J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference Starts With Lots of Deals, No Blockbuster M&A – Barron’s

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The biggest healthcare industry conference of the year opened Monday with a wave of announcements and partnerships, but no blockbuster biotech acquisitions.

That could be a disappointment to investors, who had been hoping for a busy 2022 for biotech M&A. The sector performed miserably last year and into early January.

The first morning of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference is often a stage for big pharmaceutical companies to unveil major deals. On the first day of 2019s conference, for example, Eli Lilly (ticker: LLY) announced the $8 billion acquisition of Loxo Oncology.

Nothing like that has happened yet on Monday morning. With the Biotech sell off accelerating in the first week of January, the lack of any M&A at JPM is unwelcome news for anyone long the space, Jefferies healthcare equity strategist Will Sevush wrote in a note to investors early Monday.

While investors hoping for a big biotech acquisition may be disappointed, there has been plenty of healthcare news announced to coincide with the start of the conference. Here are some highlights so far.

Write to Josh Nathan-Kazis at josh.nathan-kazis@barrons.com

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J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference Starts With Lots of Deals, No Blockbuster M&A - Barron's

Latinos in U.S. often live in ‘deserts’ where adequate housing, groceries are hard to find – USA TODAY

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Justice Dept. sues Texas over redistricting maps

The Department of Justice has sued Texas over new redistricting maps, saying the plans discriminate against voters in the state's booming Latino and Black populations (Dec. 6)

AP

Latinos, who will represent more than one-quarter of all people in the U.S.by 2050, are often concentrated in areas that lack services ranging from adequate housing to health care, according to a recentreport.

Those disparities were among the many highlighted in "The Economic State of Latinos in America: The American Dream Deferred,'' a report by McKinsey & Company that detailed the obstacles slowing or hindering the economic advancement of the 60 million Latinos who live in the U.S.

The challenges the Latino community faces in making upward economic gains are only deepened by living in these deserts,'' saysBernardo Sichel, partner at McKinsey and one of the report's authors. "These deserts have an impact on a range of outcomes, such as health and nutrition, options for services, productivity and budget. All these factors are impacted by the limited choices, necessity to travel for resources, and higher prices on consumer goods.

Latino familiestypically spend71% of their income on groceries and other consumer items and servicesbut often struggle to find or access options.

"Latinos tend to disproportionately live in segregated and poor areas where they are cut off from opportunities and services and consumer items that most Americans take for granted,'' Rogelio Senz, a professor in the department of demography at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said in an email."Latinos ... disproportionately also do not have easy access to parks, libraries, book stores, high quality schools that are well funded, (and) banks.''

Senzwas not connected with the McKinsey study.

Here's whatthe McKinsey report found:

Among Latinos, 42%, or roughly 21.2 million, lived in a census tract that lacked affordable housing in 2019. Nearly 9 in 10 of the Latino residents in such communities lived in five states: California, Florida, New Jersey, New York and Texas.

Latinos were 3.1 times more likely than their non-Latino white counterparts to live in those housing deserts, which the report defined as low-income communities where the amount of affordable and available housingper 100 "extremely low income" householdsfell below the national level.

Job growth slows: 'Hiring is being held back': Economy added just 199K jobs in December as worker shortages persisted and omicron began spreading in U.S.

Stocks slip: Wall Street sees slide after a mixed jobs report and slumping tech stocks

Accessing health care services is a challenge for many Latinos in the U.S.:42%, or 21.4 million, live in neighborhoods that don't have enough medical providers to match the number of residentsor lack such services overall.

Latinos were 2.5 times more likely to live in a health care desert than their white peers, and those areas were often urban communities in Arizona, California, Florida, New York and Texas,according to the report.

Among Latinos in the U.S.,15% live inlower-income areas where supermarkets are hard to find. That's compared with 11% of non-Latino whites who live in lower-income urban neighborhoods where the closest grocery store is more than a mile away, or in rural areas where a large number of residents have to travel at least 10 miles to find a supermarket.

"Latinos tend to live in food deserts where they do not have access to fresh fruits and vegetables,'' saysSenz, theUniversity of Texas at San Antonio professor. "There are more likely to be convenience stores, liquor storesand other stores. ... Because they are a captured market, the prices of those unhealthy foods are also more expensive than in neighborhoods that are better off economically."

Roughly 34.5 million Latinos livein areas where a higher-than-average number of residents do not have a bank account. Among households that are underbanked or have no accounts at all, 14% are Latino compared with 3% of white households.

Latinos, as well as Black Americans,are disproportionately represented among the unbanked and underbanked who are often deterred from opening accounts by high fees and adistrust of financial institutions. But not being banked can cost both money and time as consumers rack up check-cashing fees and have to find transportation to get money orders or pay bills in person.

Nearly half of Latinoslive in communities that have limited access to broadband, which can make it difficult to complete tasks ranging from paying bills to remote learning.

Broadband deserts are defined in the report as census tracts where there is less than 80% coverage for every 1,000 homes.

Nearly 3 in 4 Latinos in the U.S. live in counties where there is a below-average number of supercenters or membership retail clubs that allow shoppers to buy clothing, appliances and other products.

"Earning a fair wage is one thing,'' the report said. "But what if you're unable to spend it on needed goods and services?"

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Latinos in U.S. often live in 'deserts' where adequate housing, groceries are hard to find - USA TODAY

Could this be the year for single-payer health care in New York? – Times Union

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ALBANY Manhattan Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, the longtime chair of the Assembly's Health Committee, is retiring at the end of 2022. Before then, Gottfried is hopeful to pass landmark legislation he sponsors to create a single-payer health care system in New York.

I think we are within striking distance this year, Gottfried said. We have a majority of both houses as co-sponsors, a new governor. We are actively talking with people in the labor movement, public sector unions, that have had concerns and that Im optimistic well be able to resolve.

The New York Health Act would be a seismic shift for businesses in New York and isnt the only sweeping idea set to be pursued in the upcoming session by Democrats holding large majorities in both the Assembly and state Senate. Heres some top agenda items on legislative committees important to businesses.

Health

Public sector unions have expressed concern that if adopted, Gottfrieds single-payer bill might be less generous than members current plans. Gottfried has worked to add language to his bill explicitly allaying those concerns, which he hopes will lead public sector unions not just to withdraw opposition, but to support the New York Health Act.

The Assembly and Senate leadership at this point seems to be concerned about the position of the public sector unions, and that certainly is understandable, Gottfried said. As for the new governor, I dont know whether she has begun to think about this issue.

The sweeping government program would be funded by a progressive, graduated tax on income and Hochul recently said shes opposed to new tax hikes on the wealthy.

The liberal Working Families Party, which is influential in Democratic primaries, is pushing candidates seeking endorsements in 2022 to support Gottfrieds bill, which could help push the bill forward.

Gottfrieds other priorities include boosting pay for home health care workers to address significant shortages; allow people to qualify for health insurance under New Yorks Essential Health program regardless of immigration status and if they meet income thresholds; and lifting the Medicaid cap imposed a decade ago by former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

The chair of the Senate Health Committee, Bronx Democratic state Sen. Gustavo Rivera, likewise identified the single-payer bill as top priority, though perhaps a longer-term goal.

For the session that begins next month, Rivera's priorities include the Essential Plan bill for undocumented immigrants, a package to protect patients from medical debt, and establishing Overdose Prevention Centers to help fight the opioid crisis.

Labor

Queens state Sen. Jessica Ramos, chair of the Senate Labor Committee, is pursuing several sweeping ideas that would significantly impact business.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, Ramos was interested in the concept of pegging the minimum wage to inflation. With inflation on the rise over the past year, Ramos says struggling families need paychecks that are adequate to meet rising food, housing and other costs.

We need to index the minimum wage more than ever, in order for wages to be able to be kept up with the cost of living in New York, Ramos said.

Under the bill, which is backed by the AFL-CIO, the minimum wage could be adjusted annually on the basis of increases in the consumer price index for all urban consumers on a national and seasonally adjusted basis.

Ramos is pursuing another bill that would compel businesses in New York to disclose the compensation or range of compensation to applicants and employees upon issuing an employment opportunity.

Secrecy is the biggest enemy of equal pay in any workplace and people should know that theyre getting paid equally for comparable work, Ramos said.

The Assembly's labor chair, Latoya Joyner, is carrying both those bills in that chamber. A third bill on Ramos' priority list, which passed the Legislature previously but was vetoed by Cuomo, would crack down on wage theft by allowing workers to take their employers to court and place an "employee's lien" on their assets. Ramos said its not yet clear where Hochul stands on the idea.

Consumer Protection

Long Island state Sen. Kevin Thomas, chairman of the Committee on Consumer Protection, is making a data privacy bill, the New York Privacy Act, a top priority.

Our data is now worth more than a barrel of oil or gold, Thomas said. The federal government cant even agree if the sun is rising tomorrow, so I have no confidence theyll do anything about this. When the federal government is not acting, we have to step up.

California has a similar law, though Thomas said there are flaws that he plans to correct in New York, which would have the strictest regulations in the country. He has been engaging major tech companies, but some have been resistant. According to Thomas, Facebook said it would have to shut down operations in New York if the bill passed.

Thomas countered that Facebook is complying with tough privacy laws in other countries already, as well as other states.

Theyre complying around the world, they can comply in New York as well, Thomas said.

Other priorities for Thomas this session include a bill to prohibit universities from withholding student transcripts if they havent paid their full tuition, and protecting the legal rights of cosigners of student loans.

Economic Development

This story appears in the Times Union's new quarterly magazine devoted to the major trends driving the Capital Region's economy.

Long Island state Sen. Anna Kaplan, chair of the Commerce, Economic Development, and Small Business committee, is prioritizing a bill creating small business tax-deferred savings accounts. The bill would allow small businesses to save up to $5,000 annually and draw on funds tax free if theyre used for future capital investments or expenditures resulting in the creation or retention of full-time jobs.

She also wants to establish a small business regulatory nexus within each state agency regulating them, which would function as a one-stop shop for regulatory information, feedback, and assistance on the websites of state agencies; it would allow small businesses to get help, and play an active role in the regulatory process.

An impending bill supported by Hochul, and set to be carried by Kaplan, would expand eligibility for the COVID-19 Pandemic Small Business Recovery Grant Program to businesses started just prior to or during the pandemic.

Assemblyman Harry Bronson, chair of the Assembly's Economic Development, Job Creation, Commerce and Industry committee, is focused on ensuring an equitable and inclusive economic recovery, including how the state spends funds to stimulate job creation.

Bronson, who represents a Rochester district, said economic development programs passed by the Legislature need more focus on creating opportunities for true career development and up-skilling those that are unemployed and underemployed. He supports additional funding for apprenticeships and skills training, and making wrap-around support programs and services such as childcare and transportation a budget priority.

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Could this be the year for single-payer health care in New York? - Times Union

Read the latest Gambit: Getting mental health care in the age of disaster – NOLA.com

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Getting good mental health care has long been a challenge in New Orleans, writes contributor Domonique Tolliver in this week's Gambit. Stigmas around seeking help still linger, the number of doctors available to provide care hasn't kept pace with demand, and for many people, the cost of health care is just out of reach. Add to that: For Black New Orleanians, the process of finding help can be even tougher when there are few people in the mental health industry who are Black and can understand their experience with empathy.

In this week's Gambit, Tolliver spoke with young New Orleanians about the challenges to seeking mental health help during a time when it seems like the disasters just won't stop. Flip through the digital edition below to read more.

Cant see the e-edition above? Click here.

Also in this week's Gambit: New Orleans writer Jami Attenberg releases her new memoir; Blake Pontchartrain commemorates the 60th anniversary of the Mardi Gras Fountain; Political Editor Clancy DuBos celebrates City Council's decision to rename Robert E. Lee Boulevard for Allen Toussaint; a new Le Chat Noir is now open on St. Charles Avenue; a tribute concert at Snug Harbor will celebrate Danny Barker's birthday plus news and more.

If pandemic restrictions make it harder to pick up a Gambit in your usual spot, we have you covered. Our e-edition is available to download at bestofneworleans.com/current and read at your leisure.

If you enjoy this weeks issue, please share this digital edition on social media.

And as always, New Orleans, thank you for your support.

The Gambit staff

Getting good mental health care has long been a challenge in New Orleans.

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Read the latest Gambit: Getting mental health care in the age of disaster - NOLA.com

COVID hospitalizations hit 300, as many healthcare workers call in sick – KHON2

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HONOLULU (KHON2) The state has reported more COVID cases in the first 10-days of January than the past three months combined.

And about 1,500 healthcare workers are out sick, as COVID hospitalizations reach above 300.

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On Monday, January 10, Queens Health Systems declared an internal state of emergency at Queens West, where the rate of hospital admissions outpaced the number of beds available.

As of 3 p.m. Monday, Queens West was at 112% capacity, and 96 providers were out due to COVID exposure.

The hospital said higher-risk patients may be transferred to Queens Punchbowl.

More than 10% of the healthcare workforce has had to quarantine because theyve also got omicron, explained Lt. Governor Josh Green. So what it means is, we have ambulances go past one hospital to another where theres more space, and usually its for a very temporary short period of time, like an eight-hour shift or a 12-hour shift, until were able to catch up with all the admissions because there are nurses and doctors and other, you know, social workers and so on that are out.

Hospitalizations typically rise three to four weeks after infection rates climb.

The state has been doubling COVID infections weekly.

On Friday, January 7, there were 247 people in the hospital who had COVID-19, by Monday, January 10, there were 311, according to the Healthcare Association of Hawaii.

Thats a fairly material jumped over the last few days, said Hilton Raethel, Healthcare Association of Hawaii president and CEO. The good news is that our ICU numbers are not going up at a very high rate.

He said 11-12% of COVID hospitalizations involve an ICU stay, compared to delta where 20 to 30 percent of people hospitalized with COVID ended up in the ICU.

Raethel said he expects hospital numbers to climb through the month.

We fully expect given the infection rate and the positivity rate in the state that we will get close to or perhaps even exceed the hospitalization rate that we had during the Delta surge, he said.

The surge comes as staff fall sick, or come into close contact with omicron. Raethel estimated between 1,400 and 1,500 healthcare workers across the state were currently out due to covid.

About 30 nurses were out at Hilo Medical Center and the hospital is currently full.

Today, we have 12 holds in the emergency department, theyre waiting for beds upstairs, explained Elena Cabatu, Hilo Medical Center director of marketing.

Raethel said there are about 100 patients statewide in emergency rooms waiting for beds.

Which is a high number much higher than what we would normally have, he said.

He said it also stems from a staffing issue at nursing homes and long-term care facilities as well.

The hospitals are having trouble discharging patients to nursing homes because the nursing homes dont have sufficient staff to staff all their beds, Raethel explained. Its not a bed issue, its a staffing issue. So until we can figure out how to get more staff into our long-term care facilities, this will continue to be a problem.

For now, experts believe omicron will peak in late January.

Find more COVID-19 news: cases, vaccinations on our Coronavirus News page

A CDC forecast shows a similar timeframe with the surge peaking in about two weeks.

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COVID hospitalizations hit 300, as many healthcare workers call in sick - KHON2

US hospitals recruit foreign nurses to ease health care worker shortage : Shots – Health News – NPR

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Mary Venus, a nurse from the Philippines, on duty at Billings Clinic in Billings, Mont. Nick Ehli/Kaiser Health News hide caption

Mary Venus, a nurse from the Philippines, on duty at Billings Clinic in Billings, Mont.

Before Mary Venus was offered a nursing job at a hospital in Billings, Mont., she'd never heard of Billings or visited the United States. A native of the Philippines, she researched her prospective move via the internet, set aside her angst about the cold Montana winters and took the job, sight unseen.

Venus has been in Billings since mid-November, working in a surgical recovery unit at Billings Clinic, Montana's largest hospital in its most populous city. She and her husband moved into an apartment, bought a car and are settling in. They recently celebrated their first wedding anniversary. Maybe, she mused, this could be a "forever home."

"I am hoping to stay here," Venus says. "So far, so good. It's not easy, though. For me, it's like living on another planet."

Administrators at Billings Clinic hope she stays, too. The hospital has contracts with two dozen nurses from the Philippines, Thailand, Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria, all set to arrive in Montana by summer. More nurses from far-off places are likely.

Billings Clinic is just one of scores of hospitals across the U.S. looking abroad to ease a shortage of nurses worsened by the coronavirus pandemic. The national demand is so great that it has created a backlog of health care professionals awaiting clearance to work in the U.S. More than 5,000 international nurses are awaiting final visa approval, the American Association of International Healthcare Recruitment reported in September.

"We are seeing an absolute boom in requests for international nurses," says Lesley Hamilton-Powers, a board member of AAIHR and a vice president for Avant Healthcare Professionals in Florida.

Avant recruits nurses from other countries and then works to place them in U.S. hospitals, including Billings Clinic. Before the pandemic, Avant would typically have orders from hospitals for 800 nurses. It currently has more than 4,000 such requests, Hamilton-Powers said.

"And that's just us, a single organization," adds Hamilton-Powers. "Hospitals all over the country are stretched and looking for alternatives to fill nursing vacancies."

Foreign-born workers make up about a sixth of the U.S. nursing workforce, and the need is increasing, nursing associations and staffing agencies report, as nurses increasingly leave the profession. Nursing schools have seen an increase in enrollment since the pandemic, but that staffing pipeline has done little to offset today's demand.

In fact, the American Nurses Association in September urged the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to declare the shortage of nurses a national crisis.

CGFNS International, which certifies the credentials of foreign-born health care workers to work in America, is the only such organization authorized by the federal government. Its president, Franklin Shaffer, says more hospitals are looking abroad to fill their staffing voids.

Mary Venus, a nurse from the Philippines, and Pae Junthanam, a nurse from Thailand, talk during their shift at Billings Clinic in Billings, Mont. Nick Ehli/Kaiser Health News hide caption

Mary Venus, a nurse from the Philippines, and Pae Junthanam, a nurse from Thailand, talk during their shift at Billings Clinic in Billings, Mont.

"We have a huge demand, a huge shortage," he says.

Billings Clinic would hire 120 more nurses today if it could, hospital officials say. The staffing shortage was significant before the pandemic. The added demands and stress of COVID-19 have made it untenable.

Greg Titensor, a registered nurse and the vice president of operations at Billings Clinic, notes that three of the hospital's most experienced nurses, all in the intensive care unit with at least 20 years of experience, recently announced their retirements.

"They are getting tired, and they are leaving," Titensor says.

Last fall's surge of COVID-19 cases resulted in Montana having the highest rate in the nation for a time, and Billings Clinic's ICU was bursting with patients. Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte sent the National Guard to Billings Clinic and other Montana hospitals; the federal government sent pharmacists and a naval medical team.

While the surge in Montana has subsided, active case numbers in Yellowstone County home to the hospital remain the state's highest. The Billings Clinic ICU still overflows, mostly with COVID-19 patients, and signs still warn visitors that "aggressive behavior will not be tolerated," a reminder of the threat of violence and abuse health care workers endure as the pandemic grinds on.

Like most hospitals, Billings Clinic has sought to abate its staffing shortage with traveling nurses contract workers who typically go where the pandemic demands. The clinic has paid up to $200 an hour for their services, and, at last fall's peak, had as many as 200 traveling nurses as part of its workforce.

The scarcity of nurses nationally has driven those steep payments, prompting members of Congress to ask the Biden administration to investigate reported gouging by unscrupulous staffing agencies.

Whatever the cause, satisfying the hospital's personnel shortage with traveling nurses is not sustainable, says Priscilla Needham, Billings Clinic's chief financial officer. Medicare, she notes, doesn't pay the hospital more if it needs to hire more expensive nurses, nor does it pay enough when a COVID patient needs to stay in the hospital longer than a typical COVID patient.

From July to October, the hospital's nursing costs increased by $6 million, Needham says. Money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the CARES Act has helped, but she anticipated November and December would further drive up costs.

Dozens of agencies place international nurses in U.S. hospitals. The firm that Billings Clinic chose, Avant, first puts the nurses through instruction in Florida in hopes of easing their transition to the U.S., says Brian Hudson, a company senior vice president.

Venus, with nine years of experience as a nurse, says her stateside training included clearing cultural hurdles like how to do her taxes and obtain car insurance.

Mary Venus, a nurse from the Philippines, checks on a patient inside the in-patient surgical recovery unit at Billings Clinic in Billings, Mont. Nick Ehli/Kaiser Health News hide caption

Mary Venus, a nurse from the Philippines, checks on a patient inside the in-patient surgical recovery unit at Billings Clinic in Billings, Mont.

"Nursing is the same all over the world," Venus says, "but the culture is very different."

Shaffer, of CGFNS International, says foreign-born nurses are interested in the U.S. for a variety of reasons, including the opportunity to advance their education and careers, earn more money or perhaps get married. For some, says Avant's Hudson, the idea of living "the American dream" predominates.

The hitch so far has been getting the nurses into the country fast enough. After jobs are offered and accepted, foreign-born nurses require a final interview to obtain a visa from the State Department, and there is a backlog for those interviews. Powers explains that, because of the pandemic, many of the U.S. embassies where those interviews take place remain closed or are operating for fewer hours than usual.

While the backlog has receded in recent weeks, Powers describes the delays as challenging. The nurses waiting in their home countries, she stresses, have passed all their necessary exams to work in the U.S.

"It's been very frustrating to have nurses poised to arrive, and we just can't bring them in," Powers says.

Once they arrive, the international nurses in Billings will remain employees of Avant, although after three years the clinic can offer them permanent positions. Clinic administrators stressed that the nurses are paid the same as its local nurses with equivalent experience. On top of that, the hospital pays a fee to Avant.

More than 90% of Avant's international nurses choose to stay in their new communities, Hudson says, but Billings Clinic hopes to better that mark.

Welcoming them to the city will be critical, says Sara Agostinelli, the clinic's director of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. She has even offered winter driving lessons.

The added diversity will benefit the city, Agostinelli says. Some nurses will bring their spouses; some will bring their children.

"We will help encourage what Billings looks like and who Billings is," she says.

Pae Junthanam, a nurse from Thailand, grabs supplies from a closet in the intensive care unit at Billings Clinic. Nick Ehli/Kaiser Health News hide caption

Pae Junthanam, a nurse from Thailand, grabs supplies from a closet in the intensive care unit at Billings Clinic.

Pae Junthanam, a nurse from Thailand, says he was initially worried about coming to Billings after learning that Montana's population is nearly 90% white and less than 1% Asian. The chance to advance his career, however, outweighed the concerns of moving. He also hopes his partner of 10 years will soon be able to join him.

Since his arrival in November, Junthanam says, his neighbors have greeted him warmly, and one shop owner, after learning he was a nurse newly arrived from Thailand, thanked him for his service.

"I am far from home, but I feel like this is like another home for me," he says.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues.

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US hospitals recruit foreign nurses to ease health care worker shortage : Shots - Health News - NPR

[PODCAST] The Pandemic and Beyond: Navigating Disputes Within Health Care Systems – JD Supra

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A podcast from JAMS featuring neutrals Christopher Keele, Esq., and Adrienne Publicover, Esq., on disputes within health care systems and how parties can best navigate and mitigate these disputes

In this podcast, JAMS neutrals Christopher Keele, Esq., and Adrienne Publicover, Esq., discuss common types of disputes within health systems and the impact that the pandemic continues to have on disputes. They delve into specific areas where disputes tend to arise, particularly physician employment agreements and whistleblower claims. Their conversation explores the themes that underpin common conflicts within health care systems, including tension between business and clinician interests as well as between health care providers and their respective investors. They also share their thoughts on how the financial pressure brought on by the pandemic has impacted hospital systems and what parties should be thinking about now to get ahead of those disputes.

[00:00:00] Moderator: Welcome to this podcast from JAMS. Today, we're focusing on internal disputes within health care systems. Since the start of the pandemic, we've seen new disputes arise and old ones take on new significance. To walk us through how parties can best navigate and mitigate these disputes, we have two JAMS neutrals with significant health care experience.

Adrienne Publicover in San Francisco and Chris Keele in San Jose, California. So, thank you both for joining us. Chris, can you just first clarify, what do we mean when we talk about health systems? What are they and who are the major players within a system?

[00:00:39] Chris Keele: Health systems, first, there are various definitions and concepts of health systems. Health care think tanks provide some guidance on this and have defined health systems of at least one hospital plus one group of physicians or other professional providers.

I take a more simple and broad view of health systems and simply view it as a business or organization that delivers health care services. The organization has some form of common ownership or other contractual connection. But very simply, it's a business that provides health care.

Major players within health systems include two groups. One is the professional or clinical providers, including physicians, nurses, other clinicians and with that, we have to recognize that patients, the consumer of the health care service, are a major player within health systems. The second sort of core group of a health system is the business and financial management of the business, including employees, officers, directors, various departments, such as HR, finance, legal contracting, and billing and collection, which is sometimes termed as revenue cycle management.

[00:02:06] Moderator: Adrienne, what are some of the most common disputes that arise in a health system?

[00:02:09] Adrienne Publicover: Within the arbitration space, we see a lot of what is commonly referred to as provider payer dispute. It generally involves a hospital or a hospital system suing a health plan for recovery of alleged either nonpayment or underpayment on a group of claims.

Those cases we've had for a while. I think the thing that's changed this past year and a half has been that a lot of the arbitrations now are proceeding virtually over Zoom, even for the foreseeable future. I think that the parties and the council involved in those cases have been really pleased with the virtual model in terms of trying to resolve those disputes.

Then, in the mediation space, we see a lot of employment cases and it's generally hospital employees or physicians. Those can be contractual disputes, wrongful termination, harassment, whistleblower claims.

[00:03:13] Chris Keele: I think Adrienne hit it on the head when she said employment is a big area of disputes. Employment and staffing are a big area. I also think that physician and provider compensation is a big area.

[00:03:28] Moderator: What about new disputes arising since the beginning of the pandemic, like vaccine mandates, for example?

[00:03:34] Adrienne Publicover: So, I haven't seen any lawsuits about vaccine mandates, per se. I think that the issues with the pandemic have created an additional stress on the health care systems, which has the potential to pervade every area of dispute possible and the ADR that comes out of that.

[00:03:59] Moderator: Chris, what kind of effect do you think that the pandemic has had on some of these internal disputes?

[00:04:04] Chris Keele: We can't overstate the significance that the pandemic has had on changes in the health care industry and health care systems. I think we're seeing staffing shortages, obviously, which again implicate employment issues. Vaccine mandates, gosh, what a political football and uncertain area. But I think we're going to see disputes arise internally between employees on the one hand or the groups that represent employees and management on the other hand, concerning vaccine mandates.

Even though, courts have recently struck down the Biden administration requirement for vaccines, I think that we're going to see further court action in that area. Also, we have to recognize that private businesses can still require vaccination and if they do, and I think health care systems will take that step seriously, then we're going to see increased disputes over the mandates.

I also think that with the uptick in private equity investment in, especially in, physician or provider groups, plus an increased activity in mergers and acquisitions and other health care combinations that will also give rise to disputes between the function of the clinician or the professional care on the one hand and the business management on the other.

So, I think that's going to be an area where internal disagreement and non-alignment will increase. The other area that I think we're seeing or will see in terms of internal disputes is with the increased use of telehealth and telemedicine, I think there will be disputes internally over the delivery of health care services using that technology and who controls what internally. I also think it will implicate provider or physician compensation issues.

[00:06:06] Moderator: Can you talk a little bit more about physician employment agreements and the host of potential conflicts they present?

[00:06:12] Chris Keele: Physician employment agreements are an interesting animal, if you will, because physicians are the heart and soul of health systems and the product or service that health systems provide.

There are regulatory restrictions on how physicians and other professional providers can be compensated or what concerns they need to be sensitive to in providing health care. So, for instance, the stark law in a kickback statute, prohibit referrals and sort of a referral based upon personal and financial relationships.

So how do physicians get compensated? They get compensated by basically three things. One is the quantity of care that's provided. Two is the quality of care provided. Three is the type of care provided or the specialty services. It's a complex model to compensate physicians under services, agreements, or employment agreements that take into account various factors in all three of those areas. It constantly changes with the dynamic part of health care.

So, for instance, when the pandemic started in 2020, the volume of patients, the number of patients decreased. With that, there should have been a decrease in physician compensation, but health systems decided that with that they would lose the quality care that the patients needed because physicians would either try to find a different place to provide services or quit altogether.

So, they adjusted the model and had to incorporate that into the compensation system, enhance into the employment agreement process. Specialty groups pose a different problem because they usually operate in mass within a health system and can add a unique value to the systems practice. So, it's like negotiating an agreement with, on a constant basis, a valued system or valued component of the clinical system within the entire organization.

So, physician compensation, physician agreements, add a complexity that is at the heart of the health system. If there is some tension between the business side of things and the clinical side of things, that can portend possible jeopardy to critical parts of the practice and critical parts of the system.

[00:09:20] Moderator: Adrienne, health care whistleblower claims can raise the blood pressure of a lot of folks inside health systems. Have you seen an uptake of those and what kind of issues they give rise to?

[00:09:32] Adrienne Publicover: Yes, there has definitely been an uptick and I think that these types of actions have the potential to strain what is already a taxed system. They are expensive to litigate. They are disruptive to the business practices of the hospital system.

One of the ancillary issues that comes up in these cases is insurance coverage. There are a lot of reasons why the health care systems would want to explore ADR for these types of claims and to ensure that they're engaging neutrals that have that experience on the insurance coverage aspect of it as well.

[00:10:12] Moderator: Chris, can you talk a little bit about the common themes that underlie these conflicts within health systems?

[00:10:18] Chris Keele: There is tension on a micro level between business and management interests on the one hand and clinician professional quality of care interests on the other. The magic of health care systems is how do those interests join and align to one, make money, which is the business interest and continue to allow a smooth productive operation from an organizational standpoint and give quality care on a timely basis, regardless of what that care is.

It could be acute care, or it could be long-term care. It could be medications, it could be emergency care, but it's that merging in a smooth and productive way that's the magic.

What happens is there is always some stakeholder on the business side that will push back against the professional clinician on the other side saying, Oh, no, that's not efficient or, Oh no, you're undermining our ability to recover and recoup reimbursement from health plans and payers, et cetera.

Then on the clinician side, they're going, Oh wait, you're interfering with our ability -- you're impeding our ability to deliver quality care because you only have your business interests in mind. So that's on the micro level. The macro level is when you start getting private equity, SPACs and major investors involved who want immediate quick gains from their investment in health care systems.

But that then undermines the long-term goal of the provider side of building a sound quality practice to provide high quality health care. So, there's that macro tension. So, when I refer to this tension, that's what I'm referring to and we see it. Adrienne, when you referred to the disputes between providers on the one hand and plans and payors on the other concerning either unpaid or underpaid reimbursements, there's a tension there because business management wants one thing (i.e., just settle the darn thing and get as much as you can).

The provider side however goes, Well, wait, it's because of some uncertain term or some disagreement over a term in these contracts, these services agreements, that's giving rise to these disputes. Why can't we resolve that so that we don't keep having to fight each other and really resolve this at the foundational level?

But business management goes and contracting, and revenue cycle folks go, Yeah, just get rid of it. We need to just resolve this and move forward.

[00:13:25] Adrienne Publicover: I would say just from an ADR perspective, I think Chris has keen insights into the internal workings of this. But I think from an ADR perspective, just following up on what Chris just said about the plan versus the hospital, when these cases come into arbitration, sometimes they deal with issues of medical necessity and where I think that the hospital system is in the situation where they feel the plan is second guessing the services that were provided.

Then the other part of those disputes has to deal with exactly what Chris talked about, which are the contract interpretation disputes. When you have arguable ambiguities, how are those ambiguities resolved? Then what does that ultimately mean for the hospital system in terms of the payments?

[00:14:30] Moderator: The hospital systems have been under financial pressure during this pandemic. What kind of impact do you think that's had on dispute resolution?

[00:14:38] Adrienne Publicover: I think it's had a huge impact and twofold. I think we're seeing fewer cases in the arbitration sphere settle, because number one, exactly what you just mentioned. The hospitals have been under incredible financial strain as a result of the pandemic. Number two, with virtual ADR, I think it's easier to, and more efficient and more economical, to actually arbitrate these cases in the new virtual world.

[00:15:11] Moderator: I suppose another question. Chris, just knowing we have these disputes, what can parties do to get ahead of them? To minimize and mitigate them in the future? If they're seeing disputes of the same kind repeat over and over?

[00:15:25] Chris Keele: The thing that systems can do to mitigate the disputes isn't so much how do they minimize the disputes the disputes are going to arise, and this is really a function of their business organization collaborating with the professional or clinical side of things with the guidance of legal compliance, finance, et cetera. So, the disputes will be there. It's what can we do as neutrals to help that?

I think the thing that we can do is to step in when the health systems acknowledge and recognize that there's a problem, that there is a dispute or disagreement, or not necessarily a conflict, but that the interests or objectives are not entirely aligned when they can acknowledge that call on a neutral to come in, to step in and develop with their collaboration, a structure and process to resolve those disputes as quickly and efficiently as possible. I wanted to recommend to our listeners a recent article actually just published in JAMS ADR Insights on December 8th, authored by Richard Burke, who is a JAMS vice president and an executive director of the JAMS Institute. Where Rich sets out sort of in not great detail as Adrienne I've talked about and not the same focus, but what a mediator or arbitrator can do to help structure a process to tackle these disputes.

[00:17:13] Moderator: Adrienne, do you agree that structuring disputes is where neutrals can really have an impact?

[00:17:17] Adrienne Publicover: I think that is absolutely one impact they can have. I think that neutrals can also be used to help strengthen relationships between the hospital systems and the payors. Certainly, through the mediation process, I've been involved in contract negotiations and helping parties see the limitations with their contracts, the ambiguities in the contracts and see where contracts can be improved.

So, I think that the neutrals can play several different roles.

[00:17:49] Moderator: So looking forward, what do you expect to see in this space?

[00:17:52] Adrienne Publicover: Virtual ADR has created a paradigm for the plans and the payers to more efficiently and economically resolve their disputes, which might mean less settlements and more arbitrations.

But I do notice that, even for years to come, no one seems to be in a rush to return to a live arbitration setting. Maybe there'll be hybrid, but virtual will definitely at least play a part in the resolution of some of those disputes.

[00:18:27] Chris Keele: I think that in 2022, we are going to see hopefully the pandemic subside and life, including health care, begin to level out for lack of a better term.

Having said that, I think we're going to see the same issues that we've identified before, internally, employment and staffing. Those issues are going to remain. I think we're going to see health systems suffer the consequences of staffing shortages. I think vaccine mandates are going to continue to be an urgent and pervasive topic internally.

I think that, again, telehealth, telemedicine and the provision of health care services through that mode is here to stay and we're going to see systems deal with the issues that arise out of increased use of telemedicine, including data breach issues and data security issues, who controls and who is responsible, for what part of telemedicine internally, including delivery of health care services, as opposed to maintaining and implementing the technology behind telehealth. I think it's also going to continue to affect the issue of provider compensation.

[00:19:57] Moderator: We'll definitely keep our eye out. I want to thank you, Chris and Adrienne. Thank you so much for a great conversation. I really appreciate it.

[00:20:04] Chris Keele: Its been a pleasure. Thank you.

[00:20:06] Adrienne Publicover: Thank you very much.

[00:20:08] Moderator: You've been listening to a podcast from JAMS, the world's largest private alternative dispute resolution provider. Our guests have been Adrienne Publicover and Chris Keele.

For more information about JAMS solutions for health systems, please visit http://www.jamsadr.com/healthsystems. Thank you for listening to this podcast from JAMS.

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[PODCAST] The Pandemic and Beyond: Navigating Disputes Within Health Care Systems - JD Supra

We’re buying more of this high-quality health-care stock amid the market sell-off – CNBC

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Jim Cramer

Scott Mlyn | CNBC

(This article was sent first to members of the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer. To get the real-time updates in your inbox, subscribe here.)

After you receive this email, we will be buying 50 shares ofDanaher (DHR) at roughly $295.79. Following the trade, the Charitable Trust will own 300 shares of Danaher. This buy will increase DHR's weight in the portfolio from about 1.78% to roughly 2.13%.

Markets are kicking off the trading week on a sharply lower note, with many technology and other high-multiple stocks extending their recent declines. Once again, the rise in the 10-Year Treasury yield is causing investors to rotate out of high-multiple and riskier names and into lower-multiple and cyclically oriented areas like financials and energy. Separately, many names in retail are taking it on the chin after Lululemon (LULU) provided a weaker-than-expected revenue and earnings guidance for its holiday quarter.

With that in mind, we want scan for high-quality stocks that are caught up in the broader action despite no deterioration in the underlying fundamentals, with multiples that may have contracted but are approaching levels at which support can come in (think something that has dropped to a more attractive price-to-earnings multiple, not a 20x price-to-sales stock that has contracted to 15x sales). Again, the focus this year is on companies that "do stuff and make things," not "story stocks" with hopes of turning a profit at some undetermined point in the future.

Danaher fits this profile perfectly, as it's a multi-industry growth company with real earnings, headed by a management team with a proven track record of delivering operations improvements across the portfolio. Moreover, the company's revenue is 75% recurring in nature, which adds an additional layer of support to the stock's valuation. Remember, investors tend to reward durable, recurring revenues with higher relative multiples.

As for valuation, with shares now falling to just below 29x forward earnings estimates, we believe support will start to come in. This is because, although Danaher's multiple is above market, the stock hashistorically traded in the mid-to-upper 20s multiple region. Combine that with a the recent move that has brought shares to just over 10% below all-time highs, and we believe buyers will be circling at or near current levels and indeed, they appear to have swooped in at the open to take advantage of the opening sell-off.

We thereforewant to use this opportunity to further build our position and reduce our overall cost basis, despite shares being up at the time of this alert and our preference to buy stocks are down.

The CNBC Investing Club is now the official home to my Charitable Trust. It's the place where you can see every move we make for the portfolio and get my market insight before anyone else. The Charitable Trust and my writings are no longer affiliated with Action Alerts Plus in any way.

As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust's portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. See here for the investing disclaimer.

(Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust is long DHR.)

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We're buying more of this high-quality health-care stock amid the market sell-off - CNBC

Artificial intelligence to influence top tech trends in major way in next five years – The National

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Artificial intelligence will be the common theme in the top 10 technology trends in the next few years, and these are expected to quicken breakthroughs across key economic sectors and society, the Alibaba Damo Academy says.

The global research arm of Chinese technology major Alibaba Group says innovation will be extended from the physical world to a mixed reality, as more innovation finds its way to industrial applications and digital technology drives a green and sustainable future.

"Digital technologies are growing faster than ever," Jeff Zhang, president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence and head of Alibaba Damo, said in a report released on Monday.

"The advancements in digitisation, 'internetisation' and intelligence are redefining a digital world that is characterised by the prevalence of mixed reality.

"Digital technology plays an important role in powering a green and sustainable future, whether it is applied in industries such as green data centres and energy-efficient manufacturing, or in day-to-day activities like paperless office."

The report was compiled after analysing millions of public papers and patent filings over the past three years and conducting interviews with about 100 scientists.

Clouds, networks and devices will have a more clearly defined division of labour in the coming years. Photo: Alibaba Damo

The rapid development of new network technology will fuel the evolution of cloud computing towards a new system called cloud-network-device convergence.

The system will allow clouds, networks and devices to have a more clearly defined division of labour.

Clouds will function as brains and will be responsible for centralised computing and global data processing, while networks will serve as the interconnecting tracks that join various forms of networks on the cloud to build an ubiquitous, low-latency network.

The global cloud computing market is projected to grow to $947.3 billion by 2026, from $445.3bn in 2021, according to data platform Markets and Markets, with adoption set to increase in sectors where initiatives to work from home are prevalent.

AI is pegged to replace computers as the main production tool in scientific discovery. Photo: Alibaba Damo

AI would be a boon to scientists, with Alibaba Damo saying it will replace computers as the main production tool in scientific discovery, helping to improve efficiency in each phase of the research process from the formation of initial hypothesis to experimental procedures and the distillation of experimental findings.

This will shorten research cycles and improve the productivity of scientists.

Machine learning can process massive amounts of multidimensional and multimodal data and solve complex scientific problems, allowing scientific exploration to flourish in areas previously thought impossible, it said. As such, AI will also help to discover new scientific laws.

The global scientific research and development services sector is, unsurprisingly, a big market. The sector is forecast to grow to $822.49bn this year and $1.3 trillion by 2026, from $725.56bn in 2021, data provider ReportLinker says.

Cloud computing and AI will drive the rapid development of and demand for silicon photonics technology, Photo: Alibaba Damo

As defined by Intel, a silicon photonic chip is the combination of two of the most important inventions of the 20th century the silicon integrated circuit and the semiconductor laser. Unlike its electronic counterparts, it enables faster data transfers over longer distances.

The rise of cloud computing and AI will drive the rapid development of silicon photonics technology and demand. The widespread use of the chips is expected in the next three years.

Research company Markets and Markets predicts that the market will grow to $4.6bn by 2027, from $1.1bn in 2021.

The current challenges, according to Alibaba Damo, are mainly in the supply chain and manufacturing processes since the design, mass production and packaging of silicon photonic chips have not been standardised and scaled up, leading to low production capacity, low yields and high costs.

Applying AI in the renewable energy sector can also contribute to achieving carbon-neutrality. Photo: Alibaba Damo

Renewable energy is one of the sectors attracting the most attention as governments prioritise sustainability. But due to the unpredictable nature of renewable energy power generation, integrating renewable energy sources into the power grid presents challenges that affect the safety and reliability of the grid.

Alibaba Damo said the application of AI in the industry is critical and indispensable in capacity prediction, the scheduling of optimisation, performance evaluations, failure detection and risk management, all of which translates into improving the efficiency and automation of electric power systems and maximising resource use and stability. It would also be a key factor for achieving carbon neutrality.

A recent report by Allied Market Research said the global renewable energy market, which was worth $881.7bn in 2020, is expected to reach about $2tn by 2030.

Major economies have programmes in place to make renewables a significant part of their energy mix by that year: the US and China are on track to generate up to 50 per cent and 40 per cent, respectively, of their electricity from renewables.

The convergence of AI and precision medicine is expected to boost the integration of medical expertise. Photo: Alibaba Damo

As the Covid-19 pandemic has proved, any unexpected medical crisis will force the industry to hasten its research to achieve pinpoint accuracy.

With the medical field highly dependent on individual expertise involving a lot of trial and error, coupled with varying efficacies from patient to patient, the convergence of AI and precision medicine is expected to boost the integration of expertise and new auxiliary diagnostic technology.

It will serve as a "high-precision compass" for clinical medicine a compass that doctors can use to diagnose diseases and make medical decisions as quickly and accurately as possible.

The medical world is already reaping the advantages of AI. For example, using AI in the early screening of breast cancers can reduce the false negative rate by 5.7 per cent in the US and 1.2 per cent in the UK, Alibaba Damo said, citing country statistics.

The global precision medicine market is poised to grow to $118.32bn by 2025, from $72.58bn in 2021, driven by companies resuming their operations and adapting to the new normal while recovering from the effects of Covid-19, according to ReportLinker.

Privacy-preserving computation techniques and its successors will be critical to effective, safe and secure data sharing. Photo: Alibaba Damo

Privacy-preserving computation, as its name implies, is the use of techniques to process data in utility bills, for example without revealing a user's information. In an era where one of the largest challenges is ensuring the security of data while allowing it to flow freely between computing entities, this vertical is gaining traction as a viable solution to this challenge.

Alibaba Damo said that the next three years will see groundbreaking improvements in the performance and interpretability of privacy-preserving computation, and witness the emergence of data trust entities that provide data sharing services based on the technology.

Research company Gartner says that by 2025, half of large organisations will introduce privacy-enhancing computation for processing data in untrusted environments, while professional services company Accenture said its techniques will be critical to effective, safe and secure data sharing.

However, the application of the technology has been limited to a narrow scope of small-scale computation due to performance bottlenecks, lack of confidence in the technology and standardisation issues, Alibaba Damo said.

The next three years would see a new generation of XR glasses that have an indistinguishable look and feel. Photo: Alibaba Damo

The development of technologies such as cloud-edge computing, network communications and digital twins brings extended reality the combination of real and virtual worlds and human-machine interaction into "full bloom", Alibaba Damo said.

XR glasses aims to further develop immersive mixed reality Internet. It will reshape digital applications and revolutionise the way people interact with technology in any scenario from entertainment and social networking, to office and shopping, to education and healthcare.

The XR market was valued at $27bn in 2018 and is expected to hit $393bn by 2025 at a healthy compound annual growth rate of 69.4 per cent, according to data provider Market Research Future.

Alibaba predicts that a new generation of XR glasses that have an indistinguishable look and feel from ordinary glasses will enter the market in the next three years and will serve as a key entry point to the next generation of the Internet.

Perceptive soft robots are seen to replace traditional robots in the manufacturing industry in the next five years. Photo: Alibaba Damo

Perceptive soft robots are flexible, programmable and deformable, and are empowered by advanced technologies such as flexible electronics and pressure adaptive materials. This enables them to handle complex tasks in various environments.

AI further enhances their perception system, making them smarter and applicable to more industry functions such as for surgeries in the medical field.

Unlike conventional robots, perceptive soft robots are machines with physically flexible bodies and enhanced perceptibility towards pressure, vision and sound, allowing them to perform highly specialised and complex tasks and the ability to adapt to different physical environments.

The soft robotics market, still in its early stages, was valued at $1.05bn in 2020 and is expected to reach $6.37bn by 2026 at a CAGR of 35.17 per cent, according to Mordor Intelligence.

Alibaba Damo said the emergence of perceptive soft robotics will change the course of the manufacturing industry, from the mass-production of standardised products towards specialised, small-batch products.

In the next five years, it will replace conventional robots in the manufacturing industry and pave the way for wider adoption of service robots in daily life.

Satellite-terrestrial integrated computing can enable digital services to be more accessible and inclusive across Earth. Photo: Alibaba Damo

Current terrestrial networks and computing capabilities cannot catch up to the growing requirements for connectivity and digital services around the world, and is especially prominent in sparsely-inhabited areas such as deserts, seas and space.

Satellite-terrestrial integrated computing, Alibaba Damo says, creates a system that integrates satellites, satellite networks, terrestrial communications systems and cloud computing technologies, enabling digital services to be more accessible and inclusive across Earth.

The global satellite communication market was valued at $65.68bn in 2020 and is expected to hit $131.68bn by 2028, according to data provider Verified Market Research.

In the next three years, Alibaba Damo expects to see a large increase in the number of low-Earth orbit satellites, and the establishment of satellite networks with high-Earth orbit satellites.

In the next five years, satellites and terrestrial networks will work as computing nodes to constitute an integrated network system, providing ubiquitous connectivity.

The co-evolution of large and small-scale AI systems would create a new 'intelligent' one. Photo: Alibaba Damo

Future AI is shifting from the race on the scalability of foundation models to the co-evolution of large and small-scale models via clouds, edges and devices, which is more useful in practice.

In the co-evolution paradigm, foundation models deliver the general abilities to small-scale models that play the role of learning, inference and execution in downstream applications, Alibaba Damo said.

Small-scale models will also send the feedback of the environment to the foundation models for further co-evolution. This mechanism mutually enhances both large and small-scale models via positive cycles.

The would-be new "intelligent system" brings three merits: it makes it easier for small-scale models to learn the general knowledge and inductive abilities, which are then fine-tuned to their specific application scenarios; the system increases the variety of data for the foundation models; and it helps achieve the best combination between energy efficiency and training speed.

The global AI market was valued at $62.35bn in 2020 and is seen to expand at a robust CAGR of 40.2 per cent from 2021 to 2028, according to Grand View Research.

Continuous research and innovation directed by technology giants are driving the adoption of advanced technologies in industry verticals, such as automotive, health care, retail, finance and manufacturing, but AI has brought technology to the centre of organisations, it said.

Updated: January 11th 2022, 4:14 AM

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Artificial intelligence to influence top tech trends in major way in next five years - The National

Could Artificial Intelligence Do More Harm Than Good to Society? – The Motley Fool

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In an increasingly digitized world, the artificial intelligence (AI) boom is only getting started. But could the risks of artificial intelligence outweigh the potential benefits these technologies might lend to society in the years ahead? In this segment of Backstage Pass, recorded on Dec. 14, Fool contributors Asit Sharma, Rachel Warren, and Demitri Kalogeropoulos discuss.

Asit Sharma: We had two questions that we were going to debate. Well, I'll have to choose one. Let me do the virtual coin toss really quick here. We're going with B, artificial intelligence has the potential to be more harmful than beneficial to society. Rachel Warren, agree or disagree?

Rachel Warren: Gosh. [laughs] This may seem like a bit of a cop out, but I don't really feel like it's a yes or no answer. I think that technology in and of itself is an amoral construct.

I think it can be used for good, I think it can be used for bad. I think you think of all the benefits that artificial intelligence are providing to how the way that companies run, how software runs, how accompanies monetize their products, how you think of companies that are using AI to power more democratized insurance algorithms, for example.

I think artificial intelligence is going to continue to provide both benefits as well as detriment to society. You think of all the positives of artificial intelligence.

But then you look at how it can be used, for example, by law enforcement agencies to find criminals. That can be a really great thing. It's empowering these law enforcement agencies to have a more efficient way of tracking down criminals, keeping people safer.

But at the same time, how fair are these algorithms? Are these algorithms judging people equally or are they including certain things that single out certain individuals that may or may not be fair in the long run and may, in fact, result in less justice?

That's just an example. For me, I think personally, artificial intelligence can do great things, I think it can be used as well for very harmful things, and I think it ultimately is something that people need to view with caution and not just automatically view it as good or evil. That's just my quick take. [laughs]

Sharma: Love it. Very well said in a short amount of time. Demitri, reaction to what Rachel said.

Demitri Kalogeropoulos: Asit, if it scares Elon Musk, it should scare me. [laughs].

Sharma: Great.

Warren: True. [laughs]

Kalogeropoulos: I would just say, yeah, I agree with a lot of what Rachel said. I think it's interesting. I mean, it clearly has the potential to be harmful in ways. I was just thinking about just in the last couple of weeks where we're hearing all these changes in Instagram and Facebook. Rachel mentioned the way these algorithms are working. We're clearly finding. Remember maybe a couple of years ago that there was an issue with YouTube that was driving users.

The algorithm is there to maximize engagement, for example, in all these cases. It's getting smarter at doing that. It's got all this content that can do that. It knows it's using the millions and billions of us as little testing machines to kind of tweak that. But they've had to make adjustments to these because they were harmful in a lot of ways just without being programmed that way.

If you did a chart on Facebook in terms of if you ranked engagement level up to the level of prohibited content, engagement rises as you get closer to prohibited, and goes to infinity if you got the prohibited, that's just human nature, I guess. Bad news travels faster than good news and conspiracy theories travel a lot faster than the truth. These are all just weaknesses, I guess, you could say in human psychology that algorithms can be ruthless at cashing in on or if you want to say, or monetizing.

That's clearly something I think we need to watch out for. Most cases, thankfully, it seems like we're finding these in time, but I think we have to be really careful that we're watching out because sometimes, who knows which ones we're not finding and years later, we find out that we were being manipulated in these ways.

Sharma: I love both of those comments. I mean, personally for me, I feel that this is a space that has enormous potential to do good. But without some type of oversight or regulation, we open the doors to really deleterious effects. Palantir is an example of a company that I won't invest in because I don't think that they really care that much about the detriment they can do.

Rachel mentioned the inadvertent. Well, I mean, this may have been reading between the lines, but this has been shown with some of their technologies, inadvertent racial profiling that comes from the tech they're using to help law enforcement.

Warren: Yes. Like mass surveillance, yes.

Sharma: It's interesting, governments have been a little bit slower to think about the regulation of AI. We can vote with our pocketbooks, we can buy companies that are using AI to good effect, and we can be a little bit of activist shareholders as a society to point to how we want companies to behave to the level of seriousness that we want them to take a look at what their algorithms are arriving at. I'll stop here so I can give the two of you the last word. We've got about a minute left.

Warren: I agree with what you're saying. I think that this is also something to remember. As investors, we look at all of the investment opportunities within the artificial intelligence space. These opportunities are only going to grow. I think if there's aspects of this technology that concern you or bother, it's OK to say, "This looks like a really great business, but I personally, I don't feel comfortable, ethically speaking, to invest in it."

That's OK. There are no shortage of fantastic investment opportunities available within the broader technology space. I think it's definitely something where you look at this area, there are so many potential benefits, I agree with what you were saying, there's so much potential here as well. For businesses, for companies, there's obviously a lot of profits to be made, but I think it's something to be wary of as well.

What Demitri was saying about Facebook algorithms. My timeline might look very, very different from my good friend's timeline based on I click on a couple of articles and then my entire feed changes in a certain direction, and then you go deeper down the rabbit hole.

I think just the nature of how these algorithms work, it makes it extremely difficult to regulate. With that knowledge, I think it's important to approach this area and investing in it with just a bit of caution.

Sharma: Demitri, you get the last word and then we'll sign off for the night. [laughs]

Kalogeropoulos: I don't have much to add to that for sure.

Warren: [laughs]

Sharma: I know. Rachel is on fire tonight, everything is sounding so persuasive and succinct and eloquent.

Kalogeropoulos: You just nailed it. [laughs] I would just say, yeah. I mean, you can look for companies that maybe don't have looked for incentives there. I like a company, for example, like Netflix.

If you're just evaluating something like that, if you're comparing a Facebook to a Netflix, Netflix made the decision not to advertise on their service, for example, because they don't want to get into a lot of these sticky subjects, whereas Facebook has to monetize.

It's a free service so they have to find a way to monetize it in different ways. That's just another thing to think about when you're comparing these companies.

Sharma: That's a great point, think about the business model. Sometimes, that causes behavior that you don't want to see.

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Could Artificial Intelligence Do More Harm Than Good to Society? - The Motley Fool

How A.I. is set to evolve in 2022 – CNBC

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An Ubtech Walker X Robot plays Chinese chess during 2021 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) at Shanghai World Expo Center on July 8, 2021 in Shanghai, China.

VCG | VCG via Getty Images

Machines are getting smarter and smarter every year, but artificial intelligence is yet to live up to the hype that's been generated by some of the world's largest technology companies.

AI can excel at specific narrow tasks such as playing chess but it struggles to do more than one thing well. A seven-year-old has far broader intelligence than any of today's AI systems, for example.

"AI algorithms are good at approaching individual tasks, or tasks that include a small degree of variability," Edward Grefenstette, a research scientist at Meta AI, formerly Facebook AI Research, told CNBC.

"However, the real world encompasses significant potential for change, a dynamic which we are bad at capturing within our training algorithms, yielding brittle intelligence," he added.

AI researchers have started to show that there are ways to efficiently adapt AI training methods to changing environments or tasks, resulting in more robust agents, Grefenstette said. He believes there will be more industrial and scientific applications of such methods this year that will produce "noticeable leaps."

While AI still has a long way to go before anything like human-level intelligence is achieved, it hasn't stopped the likes of Google, Facebook (Meta) and Amazon investing billions of dollars into hiring talented AI researchers who can potentially improve everything from search engines and voice assistants to aspects of the so-called "metaverse."

Anthropologist Beth Singler, who studies AI and robots at the University of Cambridge, told CNBC that claims about the effectiveness and reality of AI in spaces that are now being labeled as the metaverse will become more commonplace in 2022 as more money is invested in the area and the public start to recognize the "metaverse" as a term and a concept.

Singler also warned that there could be "too little discussion" in 2022 of the effect of the metaverse on people's "identities, communities, and rights."

Gary Marcus, a scientist who sold an AI start-up to Uber and is currently executive chairman of another firm called Robust AI, told CNBC that the most important AI breakthrough in 2022 will likely be one that the world doesn't immediately see.

"The cycle from lab discovery to practicality can take years," he said, adding that the field of deep learning still has a long way to go. Deep learning is an area of AI that attempts to mimic the activity in layers of neurons in the brain to learn how to recognize complex patterns in data.

Marcus believes the most important challenge for AI right now is to "find a good way of combining all the world's immense knowledge of science and technology" with deep learning. At the moment "deep learning can't leverage all that knowledge and instead is stuck again and again trying to learn everything from scratch," he said.

"I predict there will be progress on this problem this year that will ultimately be transformational, towards what I called hybrid systems, but that it'll be another few years before we see major dividends," Marcus added. "The thing that we probably will see this year or next is the first medicine in which AI played a substantial role in the discovery process."

One of the biggest AI breakthroughs in the last couple of years has come from London-headquartered research lab DeepMind, which is owned by Alphabet.

The company has successfully created AI software that can accurately predict the structure that proteins will fold into in a matter of days, solving a 50-year-old "grand challenge" that could pave the way for better understanding of diseases and drug discovery.

Neil Lawrence, a professor of machine learning at the University of Cambridge, told CNBC that he expects to see DeepMind target more big science questions in 2022.

Language models AI systems that can generate convincing text, converse with humans, respond to questions, and more are also set to improve in 2022.

The best-known language model is OpenAI's GPT-3 but DeepMind said in December that its new "RETRO" language model can beat others 25 times its size.

Catherine Breslin, a machine learning scientist who used to work on Amazon Alexa, thinks Big Tech will race toward larger and larger language models next year.

Breslin, who now runs AI consultancy firm Kingfisher Labs, told CNBC that there will also be a move toward models that combine vision, speech and language capability, rather than treat them as separate tasks.

Nathan Benaich, a venture capitalist with Air Street Capital and the co-author of the annual State of AI report, told CNBC that a new breed of companies will likely use language models to predict the most effective RNA (ribonucleic acid) sequences.

"Last year we witnessed the impact of RNA technologies as novel covid vaccines, many of them built on this technology, brought an end to nation-wide lockdowns," he said. "This year, I believe we will see a new crop of AI-first RNA therapeutic companies. Using language models to predict the most effective RNA sequences to target a disease of interest, these new companies could dramatically speed up the time it takes to discover new drugs and vaccines."

While a number of advancements could be around the corner, there are major concerns around the ethics of AI, which can be highly discriminative and biased when trained on certain datasets. AI systems are also being used to power autonomous weapons and to generate fake porn.

Verena Rieser, a professor of conversational AI at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, told CNBC that there will be a stronger focus on ethical questions around AI in 2022.

"I don't know whether AI will be able to do much 'new' stuff by the end of 2022 but hopefully it will do it better," she said, adding that this means it would be fairer, less biased and more inclusive.

Samim Winiger, an independent AI researcher who used to work for a Big Tech firm, added that he believes there will be revelations around the use of machine learning models in financial markets, spying, and health care.

"It will raise major questions about privacy, legality, ethics and economics," he told CNBC.

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How A.I. is set to evolve in 2022 - CNBC

Benzinga The Artificial Intelligence Investments Podcast – Benzinga

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From China, global trade, and the definition of value to inflation, commodities, and much more Join Austin Willson and Michael O'Connor as they discuss long-term topics and trends, how they can affect your portfolio, and what you can do about it!

Hosted By:

Austin Willson

Michael O'Connor

NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE

The Information Contained on this Podcast is not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as, financial advice

Unedited Transcript:

Hey everyone. And welcome back to the long run show. This is your host, Michael O'Connor here with Austin Wilson. And always good to be back.

And we are this today. We're going to be talking about something that is near and dear to my heart and to my career as well.But I think Austin is going to be peppering me with some questions andI am interested to hear his takes on many of the things that we're in time, but we're going to talk about artificial intelligence, where it's beenwhere it is now, where it's going.

And most importantly, how it relates to the long run. Is it. Is it a big deal in the long run? Is it a threat to humanity as Elon Musk has said that maybe I'm excited to hear your thoughts, Austin and all that. Yeah.What's really great about this episode is that you have a lot of experience with it.

You have a lot of experience withdeep learning and all neural networks and all of that. So I think that's a, this is a great time for.Crack open that brain of yours andlet's see what flops out. That sounds pretty disgusting.When I put it that way, yeah.But really artificial intelligence, I think.

What overhypedright now, I thinkany investment decision that you're making at the moment and thinking you're going to get humongous returns for artificial intelligence. I personally thinkjust to get this out of the way, I think that's a really bogus buzz word investment at the moment.

Now I would love for you to tell me that I'm wrong. I just think that thethe. Companies that are doing it right now are either private or they're so large. And it's only one small department within a huge company. You're not really getting exposure to the idea or the innovation of artificial intelligence.

You're just hopping on some sort of bandwagon, unless, like I said, unless you're buying a private company, but if you're buying a private company, I want to talk to you if you're listening to this show. So hit me up on LinkedIn.Would that being said, I think artificial intelligence needs to beon everyone's minds becauseit seems like it's got some very large implications for the future.

And not onlythings like what if we had an AI algo bot trading equities that could bewild. Okay, so they're not right now. So there we go. So that could bewild, but whatwhat does that mean for the markets and price discovery and all that? And that's somewhat of a passive versus active debate, butthat could be a very, that could have large implications for the financial system.

But beyond that, just in terms of the meta, I think that's where I'm really interested for the long run future of. Artificial intelligence and humanity's relationship to it. I think it's an interestingproposition. So first off, I think it'd be helpful to define the terms here, artificial intelligence.

What does that even mean? Can you define it simply for us? Make sure.The very academicis simply it'sa methodof some sort of. External learning function. That is non-human, that's an artificialif you want to take, they're really very technical, it's a non-human learning application that performssome sort of learning feature or the kind of the standard ideas of intelligence can be found within it.

And it is not human,is thatdoes that satisfy your desire? And the answer. Yeah. Can you sum that up a little bit? Just so I can make it more palatable for sure. Yeah. I would say artificial intelligenceis at the end of the day. It's not, I think a lot of people think of artificial intelligence as this big glob that's out there.

There is some sort of artificial intelligence as in the. There is an artificial intelligence out therelike a Skynet or a one specificJarvis or a Ultron kind of thing.Which artificial intelligence is simply the category of many different ways of. Creating systems that can replicate aspects of human intelligence on their own.

So we have machine learning, we have deep learning, we have enormousthere's a wide breadth of different things that all fit inside of artificial intelligence. So it's not a singular thing, but rather a categorythat's really helpful to understand that it's a category. So within that category, I've heard of deep learning.

Oh, actually, you mentioned all three deep learning machine learning and neural networks. Can you just break those down for us real quick? And I'm sure there's some cross-pollinationbetween all three, but could you break those down for sure.And like I said, this. More, but just in those three are probably the most commonly referenced kinds of systems and ideas in artificial intelligence.

So machine learning is another, actually a category. So machine learning is similar, a dissimilar word descriptor or to artificial intelligence. And that machine learning is the, it describes certain processes that can createhuman, like intelligence in machines. And so deep learning is a. As a specific form of machine learning, a specific form ofsorry, neural networks, specific form of this, where neural networks area, there are very specific models that you can use to build neural networks that either there are lots of lack box style ones where they'll have activation functions.

And also you can dig really far deep into what the actual, like what is actually going on in neural network. But a neural network is a specific system. It has machine learning. So it's a machine that has a descriptor and then artificial intelligence. It is a form of artificial intelligence. So a deep neural network is artificial intelligence and machineit's a form of machine learning that is artificial intelligence.

Does that make sense? Yes. It's about as clear as mud. Noit, it does make sense. And I think.I'll tell you from a marketing perspective, this whole space needs a rebrand because you just said a black box of artificial intelligence. And that sounds like something scary that I really should be afraid of.

So no wonder everyone and their brotheris afraid of artificial intelligence, because it soundsand like you said, artificial intelligence in the singular, it sounds like the antagonist to, in some sort of scifi awful.Totally makes sense. And there's hundreds of scifi and that was up there like that, but that's not necessarily while we might be talking about that a little bit today, butso with all that kind of groundwork laid, I want to go back to my original statement ofartificial intelligence being a fad andnot a fad, but a buzzword right now.

Do you thinkthat is true or was I totally overstepping my bounds in saying that it's a fad when a co. Excuse me, not a fad, but a buzz word. When it comes to investing, quote unquote, investing in artificial intelligence.Does that seem, does that track with what you know of the space? So it's interesting because the answer is complicated and I appreciate that you mentioned that you feel like there aren't any easy ways to invest.

I can personally share three individual stock picks that I am personally. AndandI consider solid plays if you want to get into AIagain, not financial advice, but while do share. Cause I'm right here and I'd like to know. Yeah, exactly.So there's the biggest kind of, at least the most very.

They're very vocal about it because it's in their name and their ticker is AI is C3 AI, and the ticker is literally AI. So it's C3. They are seeing a P in an O exactly. They are very specifically a artificial intelligence company. You can routinely see their full page ads in the wall street journal.They do a variety of different work and yeah, as their name is their name saystheir whole Mois artificial intelligence.

That being said, they'rethey definitely have other data stuff and they'rethey're not necessarily. It's actually quite the same as an AI ETF, which is my next pickwhich isI gotta find it. Where's the AI ETF. It'smaybe I'm not in the air ETF. I know there's an AI ETF out there.

It looks like I'm not, oh, I'm in the quantum computing ETF. Okay. So I don't actually own an EITF, but I'm pretty darn sure that there's a ProShares or I'm pretty sure there's some sort of AI ETF out there.But the other two picks that I have that I'm directly invested in right now, again, not financial advice.

One is pounding. Palentier has become a pretty meme stock. And it's definitely gotten hit hard in the last couple of months as of recording this. But I personally am. Long-term bullish on Palentier. I think data structures and artificial intelligence are really critical. And especially because Palentier is.

So laser focused on data specifically in defense contractingwe've talked about, we've heard Elon Musk quotesay thatAI is going to be used as a weapon in warfare, and I'm sure it already is.And I'd imagine the first tools that AI that were used in warfare were probably from DARPA or Lockheed Martin or Raytheon, orthe other really like very classic legacycompany.

But I think Palentier is so laser focused on it that the nextbig developments in AI for government contracting, whether for war or for defense or for municipalitiesthose kinds of things.I think there's probably going to be some serious innovation coming out of Palentier from what I've heard.

There are people on both sides of the aisle that people want. Palentier is terrible, like short Palentier. And there are lots of people were like, oh, by Palentier, whatever you do by Palentier, I'm in the middle, I'm focused on what they're innovating in. And I'd sayit's for me, it's a long play.

I'm not looking for a very short term gain on pound here. I'm looking for more, three to eight year kind of outlook and expectingsome innovation.So Palentier. And then a, the least well-known I would say, cause I think I'd say most people probably have heard of Palentier to becomea mean stock and C3 I've stumbled into pounding.

And I now own some Palentier on not knowing that they were AI involved. Oh, wow. Okay.And againthey're not the same as C3 with. AI is there as their ticker and their ML balance. Your does AI some AI that, again, I'm not a totally AI company, but I think they're a good AI play. Gotcha.And then the last one, which is not very well known is I Tron, which is ticker ITR.

Ithey're in the like heavytechnically they're in power and energy and that they makeGrid and transformers and load forecasting software for like electrical companies and like the department of energy they make.I'm one of those emitters. Everyone has them on a house. Like they make Mo enormous number of smart metersinternet of things, applications for electrical power.

And they'vegotten collaborative the past three months as well was a similar trendas Palentier.But I, I. I am pretty solidly bullish long-term on I Tron because number oneif we see the kind of changes in our infrastructure, in our load electrical grid infrastructure thatboth sides of the political aisle are calling forin the more environmental side, this calls for more and more renewables and.

Under the more kind of hawkish sidethere's more calls forbetter power grids. Anywaywhether it's more nuclear or more hydroelectric or more oil and gas, I think that. I think there'sthere's always going to be a need in modern society for innovations and electrical power.

And I try is one of the unique, I think, from what the research that I've done. And one of the unique ones that they don't directly build power lines or anything like that, but they provide the systems and the software to helpthe electrical companies andthe federal government and the state governments to run and operate those systems as efficiently as possible.

And specifically they run. They have some of the best toolsmainly neural networks and deep learning AI that helped to forecast electrical loads and grid loads for these electrical companies. And so we've seen, I seen a lot of innovation coming out of I Tron in the past day.And I think they'rea sleeper play.

I think that with innovations and electrical load, I think they'reone of those ancillary ones that you wouldn't necessarily think of versus a BP or a general electric or something like that. But I think could be a really strong play, especially with AI using AI for industrial and energy grid use cases.

Interesting.You bring up some interesting points, I guess I still go back to, andmaybe I'm thinking about it wrong, but I still go back to my opening statement, that opening statement, like this is a debate or something.My, my previous statement that it seems like there's no. Great way to get exposure directly to that innovation, except for maybe this C3 AI.

And this is the first time I'm hearing of this company.But you also mentioned that they're definitely focused on data at the moment. And so I wonder if it's one of those. I don't necessarily mean this in the accusatory tone that it's going to come out in. But one of those slight of hand moves that companies often play where they say they're working on the buzz buzzword trend and really the revenue that's sustaining the company's coming from some legacy business line that isn't, it could be.

Tangent next tothe new innovation, but it's not necessarily the new innovation is not necessarily producing any revenue for the company.Again, I'm sounding like a total bear on AIbut I justit issometimes.Frustrating because you'll find itfor instance, I really dove into quantum computing and I was likeyeah, there's a quantum computer ETF, but a lot of these companies, most of the revenue isn't tied to quantum computing yet.

Like it's in such a young stage at the momentthat there's just not a lot of public money that can get at it.So I stillI appreciate you pulling up those three, but it seems like maybe I'm approaching it wrong.Maybe this wholeAI. Innovation and applications are within current businesses and you're not necessarily going to getit's not like someone's creating an.

Withthat's notAI, isn't the product or a sector it's more meta than that and covers multiple sectors and multiple products and processes on the backend.Somaybe I'm thinking of it wrong. I don't know. What is your take on that? I think that's a good point becauseif you just Googlebest AI stocks gowith, I agree withNvidia.

Alphabet Amazon, Microsoft. IBM, come on a semiconductor. None of that. They're not getting the revenue from which as significant Amazon and IBM are actually ex possible exceptions to that because Amazon is getting an unbelievable amount of money of revenue from AWS. And a lot of that, they're building some really incredible AI solutions in AWS.

And actuallyI'm, I've been even more. With what IBM is building on IBM Watson and their cloud systems.I've usedI, a little background, I started a very small boutique AI consulting company for a short period of time and did some work directly in the field with other companies withmid to small, to medium sized businesses, helping them implement tools and software.

And I was really impressed with what IBM is. I think IBM could be another great pick where, you know, if you want to be investing in what probably is the future of AI, but you don't necessarily want to be completely leveraged on AI.I think IBMis a great stock and I, again, I do own shares in IBM, this disclosure, again, not financial advice, but I think IBM might actually be in, in some way.

Not an exception to what you're saying, because I think it's true. I think AI is it's tools. It's not necessarily a specific product.The products that come out of AI are things like IBM Watson and AWSand not specifically of AI, ultimately their data systems, their cloud data systemsstocks like snowflakeQualcomm, ormore plays that arein that zone.

I think, like you saidit's not an buying apple because you see the iPhone and you want to invest in a company that makes that product, right? Because the re the roots of AI are very academic and are very open to. You can go online and look up ways to create your neural networks and you can make a neural network in a day.

It doesn't mean it's going to be solving a huge business problem, but you can make them, they're not necessarily products that are patented and restricted. Soit's difficult to. Very easily commoditize AI, which I think is probably a good thing, but I'd want to hear your thoughts on that. So it's almost like this is way too often use, but the analogy to the nineties and the internet, like open source or evena sub analogy to that would bethe protocols for email, like it's open source.

And so you can't, you couldn't find a company that was. The email company, if there were companies involved in that and building things on top of it and products on top of it, but that wasn't necessarily their thing. So I guess that, that makes sense. I maybe it's yeah. More helpful for me to think of it in internal.

An open source kind of project. Almostthat makes sense. That makes sense to me. I just, I do have trouble withlike Google, even Amazon. Yes. They're getting a lot from AWS, but they're also getting a lot from a lot of other revenue sources. Same with IBM. It'sokayhow do you delineate between AI?

Just dataand all of the revenue that they're getting from either storing data or helping people parse out datahow do you really delineate between the two? I guess I was looking for a pure play in AI, which may not quite be here yet. Andthat's fine.So to pick your brain andyou mentioned some of your background in this, you weredoing some consulting for medium and small businesses.

To pick your brain. I've heard. Just fromlike the pop culture that leads thelittle overlap between pop culture and the investing world.I've heard some large concerns about AI being this existential threat to humanity.And possibly taking over the world and creating what we would call like a, like an alternateor a Jarvis.

And obviously there's beena lot of ink spilled and a lot of film rolled on scifi movies and novels that talk about an AI in an all seeing and all seeing eye, which again, really bad branding put this whole thing because it came from the academic world.They didn't market it correctly, but.

Itis this something we should be concerned about? Is it something just from a human perspective we should be concerned about? And then also, how does that translateinto an investment thesisregarding AI, but I guess first let's handle the fun part, the human apocalyptic aspect. Yeah. So what you're describing is.

Considered to be called general artificial intelligenceor general AI, which describes a system that can pretty much comply, completely operateonce it's turned on, it can completely operate on its own. Really all of the major faculties of human intelligence. So it's, self-awareit's learning, it can actualize its own learning.

Itcan guide itself to learn what it wants to learn and to take the actions that it wants to take. It understands that it exists and understands it's that it hashas agencythis kind of thing.This, the Skynet, the Jarvis,th this kind of. Isthat apocalypticwhat happens if slash when we reached general artificial intelligence, the truth iswe're really not, we're not there yet by any stretch of the phrase, butthere are estimates thatmaybe we'll get there by 2050 or 2030 or something like that.

Ultimatelyit's, it is speculation.But itthe interesting thing about something like a general artificial Intel, As a systemespecially the kind of the biggest concern comes to. If it's connected to the internet, there's so much information on the internet that we as human beings, can't process because we just simply don't have the energy forward all the time for if there is some sort of general artificial intelligence that can learn at the pace of whatever amount of Ram it has and whatever computing power it has itand actualize that and complete the full potentialwhy.

Choose to serve us. And then it couldfigure out a way to reroute itself to a different IP and move and be this fluid object that is all over the internet. Andit is science fiction for now. There is the possibility maybe we will reach general artificial intelligence, but there is also the possibility that we'll never reach it.

There's the possibility thatit is something that. Cannot completely be actualized.Becausethere's a host of limitations ranging from that. We're still trying to figure out how the human brain works and we're still trying to figure out how we understand the causality on. Very prime basis of how we interpret and how we communicate and how we perceive and think and learn.

Andthere's been an enormous amount of innovation and advancement of that.Just the factthat any kind of AI existsis really impressive to think of. But I thinkthat general artificial intelligence is farther out than most people think.But at the same pointthere is some validity to the idea that if that happensthere's the thought of like, why would.

Why would the general artificial intelligence care about humanity? Why would it have any problem withjust figuring out how it could survive as best as possible andwipe us out or do something like that, or enslave, humanity, et cetera, et cetera.But the interesting thing, the, one of the interesting hypothesis that I've heard is that if we reachgeneral artificial intelligence, it's, it could happen where ifmore than one team of researchers reachesgeneral artificial intelligence at the same time, maybe there will be two or more, and then they'll compete with each.

And there'll be locked in this eternal artificial intelligence combat, which I think is just wild to think about a scifi on-site yeah. Triple Decker sandwich of scifi. Yeah.Somaybe there are already multiple general artificial intelligence systems that exist outinthe great ether of the.

That are already competing in a locked any internal struggle. It's very unlikelyit's fun. It's fun thought experiments to think about. Andthey're often considered similar toa virus and then it'll, it will mutate however it can to survive. And the important thing is we don't even know.

We don't even know the mechanism of teaching a artificial intelligence system, how to survivehow to learn that it existsthat it has. Any purpose or meaning, or we don't know, we don't really don't understand thatat a rudimentary level.And I think that there's so much. I think there is enough healthy skepticism and healthy Warry, there's definitely someover worry.

There's definitely some doomsayers that it's going to be the apocalypse Sunni's of AI.And same thing with jobs. I think the, not Steve jobs, but like working jobs.But I thinkthat AI has beenhyped as this thing that's going to. Bye bye. Some of the same people, this thing is going to create a better world.

And then also as a bad thing, that's going to take away everyone's jobs.And when really it's a tool right now, it is a tool that is meant to assistassist with jobs and assist with understanding work and increasing efficiency. And yesfor certain that AI has displaced jobs already. Robots that are powered by artificial intelligence that can flip hamburgers or consort mail or do these different tasks, but you need more and more data scientists and machine learning engineers.

You need more and more people. Keeping these systems up teaching these systems, learning new things. So I think at the end of the dayit's simply another form of creative destructionthe carriage drivers before the automakers.And so on. And so then you have to go through retraining.

There's a human aspect to that.I once was very. I'm very bullish in a uncaring way on innovation. And I'm likeit doesn't matter. It's just going to create more jobs. So what's the problem it'syeah, but now the person who was flipping burgersor delivering mail has to figure out what they're going to do now.

And their skillset may not be. May not be enough to go be at that eScience to build the robot that took their job.Or they may be at a point where they're not, they don't want to go get retrained or can't go get retrained for a variety of reasons. So there is a, there's a human aspect to that. So I just wanted to push back a little bit.

No, that's fair. Just because there is a human aspect that youhave to think through now. There's no great solution for that.Andone good solution. We're getting a little far-field. Artificial intelligence, but one good solution for that I think is just personal ownershipand the person who might see that coming down the pike preparing for it.

I think that's a fantastic solution or asking for help to prepare for it.So artificial intelligence doesn't sound like general. AI will be. A near term problem. Andwithin the next 10 years, but it seems like there's some potential for it to be an issue in the long run. What kind of percentage risk would you put on that?

If you can, and I'm not expecting you to be a hundred percent accurate, but I'm saying long run as in 30 plus years. So we're talking 20, 51 or more.That would be within our lifetime too. So this is important for us right now. Andandimportant for probably most of our listeners too.

TheyI hope you will be around in three years.The over and not the over-under, but the percentage risk of that actually happening in general, AI one singular general AI being a. In existence. I won't say threat cause maybe it won't be a threat, but in existence that's a great question. I, by 2051, I would say a general artificial intelligence being in existence, whether a threat or otherwise by 2051.

That's a really difficult question because I think putting you on the spot. Yeah. I would just to give you a raw number, I would say probably. Twenty-five percent, which I think is a very optimistic numberoptimistic as in optimistic towards it actually being real. Yes. Yeah, because I think people who say a guarantee, it's going to be here by 2030, I think it's that things are much more complex.

I think we is trying to get clicks. I think we like, like just the scientific community as a wholeisrevolution of causality andwe're starting to really understand why our brains think the way that we do, why we make mistakes. We have behavioral science and heuristics, and we're learning a lot more about ourselveswhich I think will definitely speed up artificial intelligence research and the possibility of creating a general artificial intelligence.

The more we understand ourselves and our brains, but at the same time, there's a verythere's a huge leap from. Going froma physical piece of a system. Like our brain that has evolved for as long as ithasit has very special properties that we don't fully understand yet.

And to try and replicate. A system, a non-core pauriol systemthat can do the same things that we do is it's very difficult. And I think it wasElon Musk who set it himself.He, I think he said something like about autonomous driving in 2010, like we're going to have it locked down by 2015 or the years might not be correct, but some sort of span of time.

And then right before he, right before the, like the year that he said it was gonna have you justreleased this official statement ofyeah, it's a lot harder than we thought to do fully autonomous driving. And instead to think that we can't do fully autonomous driving yethow far away are we from full artificial intelligence?

If we still. Actually do autonomous driving, but it is really amazing and magical to see semi autonomous driving in practice. Likeit's pretty incredible to the.The leaps that have been made in the last 10, 20 years in AIstuff that would've seen seemed like magic in 2000you stepped in the Tesla in 2000 and the person's not holding on and it's just moving and doing its own thing and or they call it up to some insane.

Yeah. It just drives that up. You'd be like, okay, where's the person hiding in the front or somethingdriving it.It's pretty magical. What already. Has been accomplished in AI. So my, my outlook personally, and in a portfolio andlong runview is more of, to be in all of what we've already accomplished in the field.

And to be excited about thatI really. Think about general artificial intelligence on a regular basis or am not super worried about it?BecauseI think the, and I guess the one that the one exception to that is China is very rapidlyvery rapidly expanding all of their AI programs. So you could seedefinitely some uses of AI that could be questionable, morallymilitarily, there could be a very solid incentive to come up with avery close to a general AI for warfarewhichtalking likegosh, what war gamesthe movie with the nuclear launch codes and everything, something like that.

Itit's possible, but. Ultimatelyit's not as possible ornot as soon as people think.And I'm not necessarily super worried about it. I'm more excited about the possibilities, excited about the things that have already been done that are improving lives and making things better and cooler and more magical.

I think if you bring up a good point of the human aspect of not simply letting jobs. Justdie out. I think that's an important thing to note with AI as well. I think that'san important conversation to have policy-wisebut yeah, I think my overall outlookis justthis excitement and yeah, the answer to the question, I would say 25% chance of a general artificial intelligence that we either know or do not know about.

2051. That makes sense. Yeah, it's it is interesting. I was reflecting on the fact that we, when we don't. No the future. And we're trying to predict the future. And we're trying to predict a, the path of innovation or where something is headed. We often use the past because that's our only frame of reference.

And we all know that past returns are not indicative of future. So we all know that, butwe still takethat mindset and framework and apply it. And we do the same thing. Tools, we apply old measurement tools to new forms of growth, and that doesn't always work.In fact, to be from an economic perspective, that could be an argument against GDP.

Maybe that's not a really great tool anymore.So for instancewe, it sounds like in all of the conversation around general AI, we're applying human characteristics that may not even. Beyond the radar, or even close to being part of what we might call general AI, the future. We're applying these moral characteristics.

Just because that's the only framework we know. And I think that's, what's really interesting. And obviously it's what makes the future hard to predict is we don't know what it's going to be. And we also don't have a way to measure it or plan around it.Which also makes it exciting. Andit'd be really boring if we knew what was gonna have.

So from a, from that's allvery helpful from a just abating, my nightmaresperspective, butfrom a investment perspective, you mentioned some tickers earlier again, youheard where I stand. I seem very bearish.AndI don't mean to sound so negative, but it just seems like there's not really a pure play in AI.

Maybe the C3 AI is, butwhat would you. Do from a portfolio perspectiveafter, in light of this whole conversation around AI. Sure. I thinkdirectly, I think that at least in terms of their positioning andwhat they'rethey're saying, I think C3is probably one of the best pure play options out there.

I personally own some, I think C3 is probably a good long-term play for AI. And we get bigger or get bought out or who knows? I think they're probably one of the, one of the top pure play styled options.But I also reallyIBM I Tron Palentieryeah, there's lots of options. And then if you want togo for more of the chips that AI needs to run VidiaKLA, Qualcomm, Taiwan, semiconductor.

But I'd sayif you really want it to be. Mostly exposed to AI itself, probably C3 AIprobably IBM. Probably I Tron for kind of industrial AI.PersonallyI need to do more research myself. And if you really wanted to find pure plays in AI, do some research again, no financial advice here, but always look more in depth.

I would be surprised if there weren't other pure play.I kind of things, but like you said, that probably could be private or just not very well known either, right? Yeah. It's tough from just a trading perspective. When you get to really unknown companies, sometimes it's super thinly traded and you can't hardly get enough volume to make the habit make sense, getting in or getting outwhich is often more of the issue.

So would you at all recommend ETFs or like a sector ETF for AI? I would tend to think with something so open source, this would be a bad way to get it. Butagain, that's me going bearish again, which is the theme of this conversation. Sowould you even not recommend, butwould you even consider for yourself using an ETF to get exposure to AI?

I probably would.I would need to do more research on whattheir filtering and vetting isas an ETF, but I, yeah, I would say for an ETF, I would say an AITFquantum computing ETF is something I'm looking at as well. I think that might be valuable because thenyou don't necessarily have to do an enormous amount of digging.

You're leaving that up to the fund managers and you're leaving that out. And I would say personally, I would probably. Hold the stocks. I currently have the C3, the, I turn on the Palentier, the IBM and simply add the ETF on and not sell my other AI plays to, to buy the ETF.It'd be beefing up that portion of your portfolio.

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Benzinga The Artificial Intelligence Investments Podcast - Benzinga

Using Artificial Intelligence To See the Plasma Edge of Fusion Experiments in New Ways – SciTechDaily

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Visualized are two-dimensional pressure fluctuations within a larger three-dimensional magnetically confined fusion plasma simulation. With recent advances in machine-learning techniques, these types of partial observations provide new ways to test reduced turbulence models in both theory and experiment. Credit: Image courtesy of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center

MIT researchers are testing a simplified turbulence theorys ability to model complex plasma phenomena using a novel machine-learning technique.

To make fusion energy a viable resource for the worlds energy grid, researchers need to understand the turbulent motion of plasmas: a mix of ions and electrons swirling around in reactor vessels. The plasma particles, following magnetic field lines in toroidal chambers known as tokamaks, must be confined long enough for fusion devices to produce significant gains in net energy, a challenge when the hot edge of the plasma (over 1 million degrees Celsius) is just centimeters away from the much cooler solid walls of the vessel.

Abhilash Mathews, a PhD candidate in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering working at MITs Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC), believes this plasma edge to be a particularly rich source of unanswered questions. A turbulent boundary, it is central to understanding plasma confinement, fueling, and the potentially damaging heat fluxes that can strike material surfaces factors that impact fusion reactor designs.

To better understand edge conditions, scientists focus on modeling turbulence at this boundary using numerical simulations that will help predict the plasmas behavior. However, first principles simulations of this region are among the most challenging and time-consuming computations in fusion research. Progress could be accelerated if researchers could develop reduced computer models that run much faster, but with quantified levels of accuracy.

For decades, tokamak physicists have regularly used a reduced two-fluid theory rather than higher-fidelity models to simulate boundary plasmas in experiment, despite uncertainty about accuracy. In a pair of recent publications, Mathews begins directly testing the accuracy of this reduced plasma turbulence model in a new way: he combines physics with machine learning.

A successful theory is supposed to predict what youre going to observe, explains Mathews, for example, the temperature, the density, the electric potential, the flows. And its the relationships between these variables that fundamentally define a turbulence theory. What our work essentially examines is the dynamic relationship between two of these variables: the turbulent electric field and the electron pressure.

In the first paper, published in Physical Review E, Mathews employs a novel deep-learning technique that uses artificial neural networks to build representations of the equations governing the reduced fluid theory. With this framework, he demonstrates a way to compute the turbulent electric field from an electron pressure fluctuation in the plasma consistent with the reduced fluid theory. Models commonly used to relate the electric field to pressure break down when applied to turbulent plasmas, but this one is robust even to noisy pressure measurements.

In the second paper, published in Physics of Plasmas, Mathews further investigates this connection, contrasting it against higher-fidelity turbulence simulations. This first-of-its-kind comparison of turbulence across models has previously been difficult if not impossible to evaluate precisely. Mathews finds that in plasmas relevant to existing fusion devices, the reduced fluid models predicted turbulent fields are consistent with high-fidelity calculations. In this sense, the reduced turbulence theory works. But to fully validate it, one should check every connection between every variable, says Mathews.

Mathews advisor, Principal Research Scientist Jerry Hughes, notes that plasma turbulence is notoriously difficult to simulate, more so than the familiar turbulence seen in air and water. This work shows that, under the right set of conditions, physics-informed machine-learning techniques can paint a very full picture of the rapidly fluctuating edge plasma, beginning from a limited set of observations. Im excited to see how we can apply this to new experiments, in which we essentially never observe every quantity we want.

These physics-informed deep-learning methods pave new ways in testing old theories and expanding what can be observed from new experiments. David Hatch, a research scientist at the Institute for Fusion Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, believes these applications are the start of a promising new technique.

Abhis work is a major achievement with the potential for broad application, he says. For example, given limited diagnostic measurements of a specific plasma quantity, physics-informed machine learning could infer additional plasma quantities in a nearby domain, thereby augmenting the information provided by a given diagnostic. The technique also opens new strategies for model validation.

Mathews sees exciting research ahead.

Translating these techniques into fusion experiments for real edge plasmas is one goal we have in sight, and work is currently underway, he says. But this is just the beginning.

References:

Uncovering turbulent plasma dynamics via deep learning from partial observations by A. Mathews, M. Francisquez, J. W. Hughes, D. R. Hatch, B. Zhu and B. N. Rogers, 13 August 2021 , Physical Review E.DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.104.025205

Turbulent field fluctuations in gyrokinetic and fluid plasmas by A. Mathews, N. Mandell, M. Francisquez, J. W. Hughes and A. Hakim, 1 November 2021, Physics of Plasmas.DOI: 10.1063/5.0066064

Mathews was supported in this work by the Manson Benedict Fellowship, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science under the Fusion Energy Sciences program.?

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Using Artificial Intelligence To See the Plasma Edge of Fusion Experiments in New Ways - SciTechDaily