🤖 Axios AM: Robot doctors

Plus: Fastest corvette | Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Open in app View in browser   Presented By Bank of America   Axios AM By Mike Allen · Jan 18, 2023 👋 Hello, Wednesday. Smart Brevity™ count: 1,193 words ... 4½ minutes. Edited by Noah Bressner. 🇺🇦 Breaking: A helicopter crash in a Kyiv suburb today killed 18 people, including Ukraine's interior minister and three children. No fighting was reported in the area. Get the latest.     🤖 1 big thing: Robot doctors Illustration: Maura Losch/Axios   ChatGPT, the generative AI juggernaut, is ready to disrupt health care, Axios Pro Rata author Dan Primack writes. Why it matters: Lots of clinical diagnoses and decisions could someday be made by machines, rather than human doctors. "I think we're in the middle of a 20-year arc — kind of like what we already saw with finance," Vijay Pande, a health care investor with Andreessen Horowitz and adjunct professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, tells Axios. "In 2000, it was insane to think that a computer could beat a master trader on Wall Street. Today, it's insane to think that master trader could beat a computer." 😲 ChatGPT recently passed all three parts of the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination — although just barely — as part of a research experiment. As the researchers note, medical students often spend hundreds of hours preparing for the test. 🔬 Zoom in: Ansible Health, a Silicon Valley startup focused on treating COPD, had been researching various AI and machine-learning tools. "There was so much excitement in the tech world when ChatGPT came out, so we wanted to see if it was just hype," explains Jack Po, Ansible's CEO and a former Google product manager. "[W]e were pretty amazed at the results. Not only at what it was getting right, but at how it was explaining itself." Po and several others then decided to have ChatGPT take the medical exam, after ensuring that "none of the answers, explanations or related content were indexed on Google." The big surprise was that ChatGPT could perform so well without ever having been trained on a medical dataset. 🥊 Reality check: Don't expect a machine to autonomously diagnose patients anytime soon. AI models sometimes make confident assertions that turn out to be false — which could prove dangerous in medicine. Generative AI remains in the early innings. So for now, it'll augment medical work rather than replace it. 🔮 What's next: Once the technology moves beyond text, it could incorporate tone of voice, body language and facial expressions. One benefit would be a quick summary of a patient's medical records. Physicians often have only moments to scan a lifetime of charts. Share this story.     2. 🇨🇳 Breaking: Yellen plans China trip Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen meets China Vice Premier Liu He in Zurich today. Photo: Michael Buholzer/Keystone via AP ZURICH, Switzerland — Janet Yellen plans to make her first trip to China as Treasury secretary in the "near future," reports Axios' Hans Nichols, who's aboard her plane. Why it matters: The visit will mark a big step in the Biden administration's effort to improve communications with China after relations deteriorated over the past two years. The Treasury Department announced the trip after Yellen held a 2+-hour meeting today with China Vice Premier Liu He in Zurich. The two met before Yellen flies to Africa. Liu was in Switzerland after addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he urged leaders to avoid a "Cold War mentality." Share this story.     3. 💰 Spending more than we make Data: Morning Consult. Chart: Axios Visuals An increasing share of Americans spend more than they earn, Emily Peck writes in Axios Markets, from a Morning Consult survey out today. Why it matters: Inflation may be easing. But high prices are still a big problem for individuals, particularly after a year of spending down savings. It's not a great sign for economic growth. 🧮 By the numbers: 28% of those earning less than $50,000 a year said expenses outweighed their income in December — a big jump from 21% last year. 9% of those earning more than $100,000 said the same, up from 7% last December. Share this story.     A message from Bank of America New help for striving communities     As the private sector innovates aid and financing, seeking holistic solutions to neighborhood challenges is the cornerstone of the approach. Businesses, which rely on healthy communities for their own prosperity, must play a big part in driving solutions. See why.     4. 📷 1,000 words Photo: Matt Rourke/AP Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) is sworn in yesterday on a stack of three Hebrew Bibles — a military version carried by Herman Hershman of Philadelphia on D-Day in 1944 ... a family Bible ... and one from the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, where a gunman in 2018 killed 11 worshippers in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. Go deeper.     5. 🔋 How Musk treats risk Photo illustration by Justin Metz for The New York Times   Elon Musk once articulated his philosophy of risk as the "most good for most number of people," Christopher Cox writes in next Sunday's New York Times Magazine cover story: "That dictum, as part of an ad hoc system of utilitarian ethics, can explain all sorts of mystifying decisions that Musk has made, not least his breakneck pursuit of A.I., which in the long term, he believes, will save countless lives. "Unfortunately for Musk, the short term comes first, and his company faces a rough few months." Cox notes that Musk's embrace of risk "has produced true breakthroughs: SpaceX can land reusable rockets on remote-controlled landing pads in the ocean; Starlink is providing internet service to Ukrainians on the front lines; OpenAI creeps ever closer to passing the Turing test." "As for Tesla," Cox adds, even Musk's harshest critics "would pause, unbidden, to give him credit for creating the now-robust market in electric vehicles." 🥊 Reality check: Lawsuits pending against Tesla for its self-driving Autopilot mode come back to a single theme, Cox writes. "Tesla consistently inflated consumer expectations and played down the dangers involved. ... Drivers weren't warned about problems with automatic braking or 'uncommanded lane changes.' "The company would admit to the technology's limitations in the user manual but publish viral videos of a Tesla driving a complicated route with no human intervention." Read the piece (subscription) ... Go deeper with Axios' "How It Happened" episode on Musk's empire of risk.     6. 🎧 Season finale of Axios "How It Happened" Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios   Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter could mark a major milestone in his career — the moment his empire became too big and complex for one billionaire to run, Axios' Naomi Shavin and Erica Pandey report. Hear more in the season finale of our "How It Happened" podcast series — "Elon Musk vs. Twitter, Part V: Cracks in the Empire," with reporting from across the Axios newsroom. Listen here ... Keep reading.     7. 🏎️ Fastest Corvette 2024 Corvette E-Ray in Milford Mich. Photo: Carlos Osorio/AP The fastest Corvette ever made will hit showrooms in the second half of this year — and it's a gas-electric hybrid. The front wheels run on an electric motor, with the traditional 6.2-liter V8 powering the back of Chevrolet's storied sports car. Why it matters: The 2024 E-Ray — unveiled 70 years after the first Corvette was introduced in 1953 — is a step toward an all-electric version, AP's Tom Krisher writes. Aimed at affluent buyers who want new technology, the $104,000 E-Ray jerks your head back as it goes from zero to 60 mph in 2.5 seconds. GM says it can cover a quarter mile in 10.5 seconds. Photos, video.     8. 🏀 Parting shot Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images Yup, that's Golden State Warriors star Steph Curry at the White House podium, just before the NBA champs celebrated with President Biden. At the top of the daily briefing, Curry thanked President Biden and Vice President Harris for the invitation, which he called a chance to "acknowledge the place sports has in bringing people together from all walks of life ... to provide inspiration, hope, love, togetherness." More photos.     A message from Bank of America Sustainable communities and the private sector     Bank of America is finding new ways to provide help to the communities it operates in. Sustainable finance can be a powerful tool in addressing critical environmental and social issues affecting local communities around the country. Learn more.   📬 Thanks for starting your morning with us. Please invite your friends to sign up. Are you a fan of this email format? Your essential communications — to staff, clients and other stakeholders — can have the same style. Axios HQ, a powerful platform, will help you do it.   Axios thanks our partners for supporting our newsletters. Sponsorship has no influence on editorial content. Axios, 3100 Clarendon B‌lvd, Arlington VA 22201   You received this email because you signed up for newsletters from Axios. To stop receiving this newsletter, unsubscribe or manage your email preferences.   Was this email forwarded to you? 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