Mauricio Alas’ Post

The U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, announced on Monday, that he would moving forward to push for social media companies to introduce a warning label, advising parents that using these platforms might damage adolescents’ mental health. I mean, as adults, most of us would think this to be an obvious move. This latest move is another volley in the surgeon’s general mission to bring increasing awareness on this issue. His initiative entails the implementation of new practices, among them, the sharing of internal data on the health impact of their products; to allow independent safety audits; and restrict features like push notifications, autoplay and infinite scroll, which he says “prey on developing brains and contribute to excessive use.” Yet, Chamber of Progress, a tech lobbying firm representing the financial and legal interests of all the major tech giants, obviously oppose this because of course they would. Not getting kids hooked on their products early would squarely against their business model. They even tried to invoke Trump, claiming that a warning label is something Trump would do. Implying that, you know, if the bad orange man did it, then a warning is clearly a bad move. Context and intent in that argument be damned. As it is humorous, if blatantly transparent. https://lnkd.in/gfrfCtNY

To my American friends, in just a very short amount of time and as of this original post, the US is going to cross over the $35 trillion dollar in Debt mark. That's an average of about $100,000 worth of debt for every single US citizen, regardless of age, against a GDP of about $28 trillion. Sure, it is not Canada's 129.26% Public Debt to GDP ratio, but at 89.22%, at an astronomical $35 trillion, one could say that is concerning. Surprised how Economics is really not a topic of discussion in most of the your public sphere for quite a few years, since about 2014, if I recall. Lots of pandering to other issues by both corporations and administrations though that make people forget, or get distracted about larger, real world issues that affect most, if not all. I wanted to get a screen capture once the $33,333,333,333,333 mark happened around mid-Sept. 2023, but missed it by a few hours, that big boy of a number is growing up at a rate that is hard to keep up! It is currently raising, roughly at the rate of $1 million of debt, every 25 seconds! Which is rounds up to about $1 trillion about every 3 months. More people should know, pass it on. For reference, the moment I clicked on post, the debt was just at $34,835,351,900,347. You can check a list of the 30 top countries in terms of raw debt via included link. https://lnkd.in/gZxy9ap6

Update: In case you may not know, some background: The USA signed the 50-year Petrodollar pact with Saudi Arabia on June 6, 1974, following the Oil Crisis in 1973. In exchange, for US military support and to further legitimize the monarchy, the Saudis agreed to exclusively use the US Dollar when pricing oil sales. The consequence of this cannot be underestimated. It allowed the USD to become the de-facto world currency, asserting unmatched control over world markets by proxy, their own economic growth, along with excellent inflation pressure control. It allowed, among many things, to stable their economy by exporting inflation to the rest of the world when printing cash as if it was going out of style. Priming the USD as preferred for general transactions and making it a safer investment for US savings bonds, which the US uses to finance their general expansionism, economic and otherwise. Not to mention, lowering their interest repayment rates, as well. Well, that came to an end at midnight, June 9th. I was waiting to see if some last-ditch pact would come but it seems it may not. Albeit one can still come but surely by this point, it will cost the US dearly, given the different world today. I do not see the Saudis readily committing to another half a century. As economically speaking, there are more players and the chessboard itself is very different, than how it was in 1974. The reality too, is the US leadership has weaponized the USD too much, and by extension, also the SWIFT banking system, with a number of countries now formulating ways of getting around these. The world has witnessed this and whether one agrees or not, most countries do not have to play by these rules, and why would they? There is definitely a shift, one the US would surely be willing to go to war over, in time, and if necessary. Is the USD going to crater tomorrow? Of course not. The wheels here will move slowly but they are moving. Since in world finance, this is a fork on the road the US will not prefer. Apparently, the Saudis are reading the room and seem willing to broaden their trading options. I find it really surprising how Western media --for what I have seen-- appears to be underplaying, or not even discussing this much. While non-Western news are reporting on this in a more contextual fashion. Why? Likely because not having a pact fusing the USD to Oil sales will reduce the prominence of the USD in the world, over time. Case in point, you want to know something that is very telling? The source used for this same post a few days ago, from Nasdaq itself, was this article: https://lnkd.in/g2UE4jam Click on it, please. See where it takes you. Nevertheless, if you are curious and what the original was, our friends at the Internet Wayback Machine can be of help. Click here: https://lnkd.in/gZUzvYUX Make your own conclusions.

Adobe Users Beware. LOL This is just Adobe playing people for fools via classic legalese. Anyone who has a reasonable understanding about the field of AI knows *Machine Leaning* is the umbrella term used. Adobe knows this because that is the same wording they specified in their ridiculous TOS where users were, and are being forced to grant access to their cloud data and whatever you import into it. On their blog, which is not legally binding, they do not even address the main set of concerns brought up, just your basic, manipulative and distracting PR speak. Generative AI, is not even mentioned in their TOS in this matter, and it makes sense why, it is just but a singular branch of research that exists under the larger umbrella of Machine Learning. As such, Adobe will still retain access to your data for a multitude of other uses. They are trying to confuse people by using different terminology, hoping people will blindly fall for it. Don't fall for it. Them saying, they are going to make it "abundantly clear," to not use your data for "Generative AI" is akin to saying that you are giving them full access for them to steal your car but that they will make sure to leave you the spare tire behind, because "they promise" not to steal your spare tire. Classic example of horrible crisis communication on the part of Adobe. Bottom line? Unless they state that they will not use your data for *any* or *all* Machine Learning, then anyone sticking around is still granting Adobe access to almost all, or just to about everything they originally wanted. https://lnkd.in/gK7uwwny

Google's AI, after suggesting users use glue --non-toxic, of course-- as an adherent for cheese in pizza, and to eat stones for your health, is dialing back on the instances of their Search Overview feature appearing Google search. Aside the unknown sourcing for their answers and suggestions to the end user, it appears, according to SEO firm BrightEdge that Overview was previously generated in 63% of healthcare related searches. That could be concerning, to some. https://lnkd.in/gk2RVmhm

Imagine. This was published 2 or 3 years ago. Be honest, would your first impression be that clearly, The Times, one of UK's oldest and most respected newspapers had suddenly gone rogue? Turned "anti-vaxxer?" Anti-science? Wanting to kill the proverbial grandma? Likely, you would not have even seen it, it would not have been written, no one would have dared, not wanting carte-blanche labels thrown at them via the court of public opinion. No one wanted to risk losing their jobs or reputation. Factual, academic-based information be dammed. History will look back, as not one of the most rational of times. Yet, a very fascinating period highlighting the power of Marketing in Public Policy at a scale. Times change. This is now allowed. However, if you, like many, have been following medical or Academic data from a couple of countries, then you know this is nothing new or unexpected. This was fairly obvious as far back as Fall 2021. In fact, as time goes by, the 'may' will change, and you can be sure to see more and more of this type of reporting under the guise of, 'but we didn't know.' Yet that is an excuse and not a correct statement. However, that politicians and bureaucrats abhor admitting mistakes is. https://lnkd.in/gWxCeX8f Remember, even the claim of "very rare" per shot, which at least in the EU, is defined as a case incidence of about 0.01 --the USA has no such, specific definition for medications-- means severe side effects can easily go into the millions or higher, when the medical interventions, as per the WHO, now surpass over 13 billion doses administered. Since many have gotten it multiple times, and if you add all of the severe side effects conditions together, plus the misdiagnosed ones. Add to this that the risk/benefit ratio of these interventions breaks if you are healthy and under 65. But contextual, medical nuance was lost for a while and very much frowned upon by many. Blank labels were far easier. The best we can all do now is change that outlook to give the attention and care to those who need it. "The secondary analysis of the placebo-controlled, phase III randomized clinical trials of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines showed that the Pfizer trial had a 36% higher risk of serious adverse events in the vaccine group." "The Moderna trial had a 6% higher risk of serious adverse events among vaccine recipients." If interested in reading the British Medical Journal's paper The Times article is based on, I invite you to check it out but the reality is this one is far from unique, outside the fact that it made headlines: https://alas.click/bmjem

I am fairly sure some of my friends in Finance felt theirs hearts climb to their throats, if even for a second or two, this morning. Luckily, the claim now is that it is fixed.

In AI News. Some LLMs are using Reddit, and paying $60 million for the right to help them train their AI models. Based on this and upon asked, Google AI suggests its users to add non-toxic --over toxic glue-- of course, in order to add moisture to their homemade Pizza sauce. Leveraging its knowledge on a sarcastic comment posted 11 years ago. Ridiculousness aside, where I have to state to please do not do this, it is clear that using random data sets in order to train AI's is not a wise idea. On top of the obvious and well known concerns that arise with harvesting user data without their consent or knowledge, we now have the reality that AI's are not smart enough or capable to tell the difference between real information, trolling or sarcasm, which will nevertheless downstream to unsuspecting users as factual information. Worse it will be when it does so anyway, either as a proactive tool for disinformation or due to the serious bias, ideological, political or otherwise of the people selecting the data training it. It will up to the end user to ascertain via other means that provided answers are in fact, correct. Source: https://lnkd.in/ghs9uYF5 A funny video where the above is replicated can be watched here: https://lnkd.in/g6mZFVpQ