4 ms·

Covid response / lockdown would be the first epistemological catastrophe due to AI . Not strictly due to LLM, but broadly due to poorly configured and likely ta

Covid response / lockdown would be the first epistemological catastrophe due to AI . Not strictly due to LLM, but broadly due to poorly configured and likely tampered-with diagnostics signals, wryly inference models that led to global triggering of failsafe's and lockdown response protocols. In the simplest terms, poor diagnostics were wildly extrapolated which triggered excessive response. Phony narratives were amplified on social media, while critical voices were muffled. If you think about AI as an end to end process, with diagnostic signals on one end and martial authority on the other -- covid was a stress-test & failure of the intervening systems (and protocols). With LLM, you'll have more fog-of-war on the diagnostics side, vastly more complicated inference, infinite amounts of fabricated narratives, and broader scope of controls on the authority side.

simonw 1y ago
Covid killed 1,193,165 people in the USA alone. Do you think the lockdowns failed to prevent that number from being significantly larger?
- tonymet 1y ago
  diagnostic error
  - thfuran 1y ago
    What?
    - tonymet 1y ago
      that figure
      - thfuran 1y ago
        On what basis do you make that conclusion?
        tonymet 1y ago
        flimsy definition of “covid death”. Questionable & in-flux PCR testing, Shoddy antibody tests (calibrated against PCR), Dubious definition of “covid disease”, e.g. “you can have covid and be asymptomatic”. 7 digits of precision. How many digits died with the actual disease, from the actual disease, or coincidentally with an antibody test? A few million elderly die each year regardless. Re-classifying a large share as “covid” is a plausible accounting mistake.
        thfuran 1y ago
        The rest of the spitballing aside, your last point didn't hold up. Perhaps unsurprisingly, organizations like the CDC spend a lot of effort trying to get good estimates of mortality of various causes and have thought about this sort of thing before: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
        tonymet 1y ago
        on a typical year there are 300,000 deaths due to medical error. If you tell 30% of the population to go to the hospital unnecessarily you can hit 1M excess deaths very easily. The definition of the disease and disease mortality were nebulous. If someone goes to the hospital in panic because of a cough, they are ventilated and die -- was that from covid?
- roenxi 1y ago
  That seems quite possible; I haven't seen anyone waving evidence around that the US lockdowns helped. Have you got any figures estimating what order of magnitude difference they made?
  - simonw 1y ago
    Here's a recent one (looks like it's gone through peer review now, there were earlier preprints that hadn't floating around): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40468026/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40468026/ The PDF is linked from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/387051732_Estimating_The_Impact_of_Public_Health_Interventions_on_COVID_Mortality_in_The_United_States_Using_Reductions_in_Influenza_Mortality_as_an_Indicator_Of_Non-Pharmaceutical_Infection_Control https://www.researchgate.net/publication/387051732_Estimatin... > This study uses influenza mortality reduction (IMR) as an indicator of the aggregate effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI's) on the spread of respiratory infections to assess their impact on COVID mortality. [...] A counterfactual model of no NPI's suggests they prevented 850,000 COVID related deaths in the United States.
    - roenxi 1y ago
      1) That is NPIs, it doesn't break out the impact of lockdowns. There was a big drop in IMR across all the states, even though it seems rather unlikely that all states followed the same policies. 2) If we attribute all the change to lockdowns that would suggest the lockdowns were a minor disaster. If 32% of the population didn't get vaccinated - that is basically a 3rd of the population locked down for nothing, up to around 50% in some areas. One obvious issue is lockdowns are always competing against people voluntarily choosing to stay home and isolate themselves and adopting special procedures in nursing homes. The high correlations between vaccination rate and IMR suggest it might actually just be picking up how concerned communities were with COVID and how much effort they put into protecting themselves. It is an interesting study though, I like the approach.
  - tonymet 1y ago
    wouldn't this also be part of the AI catastrophe?
amanaplanacanal 1y ago
Now I'm wondering if you used an LLM to generate this sci-fi scenario.
- tonymet 1y ago
  The irony that people speculate about AI-pocalypse and when one happens they balk.
- tonymet 1y ago
  more of a model. human generated
BLKNSLVR 1y ago
Strong disagree on AI / LLMs having any involvement whatsoever with Covid response / lockdown. Off topic: Strong disagree on the rest of what you said. It's also easy to forget the dangers of Covid pre-vaccine when we're quite deeply post-vaccine now.
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  It's like Y2K. Nothing bad happened, so why did we waste all that money? People forget the horror show at the beginning of the epidemic of overflowing hospitals in Italy. I think what was happening there very much influenced our thinking about it, we definitely didn't want that happening here (wherever in the world here is for you).

simonw 1y ago

Covid killed 1,193,165 people in the USA alone. Do you think the lockdowns failed to prevent that number from being significantly larger?

tonymet 1y ago
diagnostic error
- thfuran 1y ago
  What?
  - tonymet 1y ago
    that figure
    - thfuran 1y ago
      On what basis do you make that conclusion?
      - tonymet 1y ago
        flimsy definition of “covid death”. Questionable & in-flux PCR testing, Shoddy antibody tests (calibrated against PCR), Dubious definition of “covid disease”, e.g. “you can have covid and be asymptomatic”. 7 digits of precision. How many digits died with the actual disease, from the actual disease, or coincidentally with an antibody test? A few million elderly die each year regardless. Re-classifying a large share as “covid” is a plausible accounting mistake.
        thfuran 1y ago
        The rest of the spitballing aside, your last point didn't hold up. Perhaps unsurprisingly, organizations like the CDC spend a lot of effort trying to get good estimates of mortality of various causes and have thought about this sort of thing before: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
        tonymet 1y ago
        on a typical year there are 300,000 deaths due to medical error. If you tell 30% of the population to go to the hospital unnecessarily you can hit 1M excess deaths very easily. The definition of the disease and disease mortality were nebulous. If someone goes to the hospital in panic because of a cough, they are ventilated and die -- was that from covid?
roenxi 1y ago
That seems quite possible; I haven't seen anyone waving evidence around that the US lockdowns helped. Have you got any figures estimating what order of magnitude difference they made?
- simonw 1y ago
  Here's a recent one (looks like it's gone through peer review now, there were earlier preprints that hadn't floating around): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40468026/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40468026/ The PDF is linked from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/387051732_Estimating_The_Impact_of_Public_Health_Interventions_on_COVID_Mortality_in_The_United_States_Using_Reductions_in_Influenza_Mortality_as_an_Indicator_Of_Non-Pharmaceutical_Infection_Control https://www.researchgate.net/publication/387051732_Estimatin... > This study uses influenza mortality reduction (IMR) as an indicator of the aggregate effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI's) on the spread of respiratory infections to assess their impact on COVID mortality. [...] A counterfactual model of no NPI's suggests they prevented 850,000 COVID related deaths in the United States.
  - roenxi 1y ago
    1) That is NPIs, it doesn't break out the impact of lockdowns. There was a big drop in IMR across all the states, even though it seems rather unlikely that all states followed the same policies. 2) If we attribute all the change to lockdowns that would suggest the lockdowns were a minor disaster. If 32% of the population didn't get vaccinated - that is basically a 3rd of the population locked down for nothing, up to around 50% in some areas. One obvious issue is lockdowns are always competing against people voluntarily choosing to stay home and isolate themselves and adopting special procedures in nursing homes. The high correlations between vaccination rate and IMR suggest it might actually just be picking up how concerned communities were with COVID and how much effort they put into protecting themselves. It is an interesting study though, I like the approach.
- tonymet 1y ago
  wouldn't this also be part of the AI catastrophe?

amanaplanacanal 1y ago

Now I'm wondering if you used an LLM to generate this sci-fi scenario.

tonymet 1y ago
The irony that people speculate about AI-pocalypse and when one happens they balk.
tonymet 1y ago
more of a model. human generated

BLKNSLVR 1y ago

Strong disagree on AI / LLMs having any involvement whatsoever with Covid response / lockdown. Off topic: Strong disagree on the rest of what you said. It's also easy to forget the dangers of Covid pre-vaccine when we're quite deeply post-vaccine now.

amanaplanacanal 1y ago
It's like Y2K. Nothing bad happened, so why did we waste all that money? People forget the horror show at the beginning of the epidemic of overflowing hospitals in Italy. I think what was happening there very much influenced our thinking about it, we definitely didn't want that happening here (wherever in the world here is for you).