Michael Rosenthal

(2/2020) A new field of study was coined in 1955 by John McCarthy, then an assistant professor of mathematics at Dartmouth College. He defined this area as Artificial Intelligence, as follows: "Every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it." McCarthy thought that one could develop machines that could "use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans and improve themselves." Scientists believed at the time that we could quickly develop thinking machines that could do any work humans could do. It is now some six decades later, and though many advances have been made in tasks previously only done by humans, the level predicted by McCarthy has not yet been achieved.

A more realistic definition of artificial intelligence was made by Andrew Moore, Dean of Computer Science at Carnegie-Mellon University. "Artificial intelligence is the science and engineering of making computers behave in ways that until recently, we thought required human intelligence."

Some real-world applications that have been achieved include facial recognition, transforming of audio to text, recommending videos on YouTube, and the display of personalized content in the Facebook News Feed.

Perhaps the most striking, at least to me, example of AI is the self-driving car. It makes sense of its surrounding, taking in feeds from cameras installed around the vehicle to detect objects such as roads, traffic signs, other cars, and people. What would Henry Ford say to this?

Another now common application is the digital assistant, such as Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google Assistant, which use AI to transform spoken words to text and map the text to specific commands. AI works with these digital assistants to detect language subtleties and synthesize human voices.

Other applications of AI now in use include advances in translation between languages, uses in medicine and health care, and one that we hear about more every day, in both reality and in fiction, facial recognition.

As I was growing up, I was a devoted reader of science fiction, a significant factor in determining my later choice to become a scientist. The ever-developing story of AI sounds so much like the fiction I have read, particularly reminding me of the work of Isaac Asimov.

New York Senator Charles Schumer has suggested that the government create an agency that would invest $100 billion over five years in basic research on AI. He suggests that such an investment would enable the Unites States to keep pace with China and Russia in the area and finance progress that U.S. companies are unable or unwilling to finance. The idea received serious presidential support for the development of AI technology but did not offer financing. President Trump ordered agencies to develop an "action plan for protecting the U.S. advantage in AI technology," but did not call for any new spending.

In other science news…

Vaping appeared for a while to be a good alternative to tobacco use. However recent developments have indicated that vaping brings with it serious health problems of its own. It appears that Vitamin E acetate is the culprit causing serious illness in many of those vaping. The chemical has been found in the lung fluid of nearly all of the sick patients. Since March 2019, vaping related lung injuries have struck more than 2500 people in the United States and killed at least 54 people. Vitamin E acetate is a synthetic form of Vitamin E which is added to many e-cigarette liquids as a thickener. It is a common item in foods and cosmetics, but it is speculated that its heating and then inhalation can damage the lungs.

It’s nice to be able to report some good news! Fairfax County, Virginia, is moving to buy energy from contractors who will install solar panels on more than 100 county buildings. The long term 25 year plan will empower three contractors to outfit at least 113 schools, community centers, and park buildings with solar energy panels. County officials say that the generation of 45 megawatts of solar capacity will save $60 million in utility costs.

It has been reported that most U.S. research agencies will receive healthy budget increases in 2020, totaling $125 billion. This is in contrast to the presidential budget cuts to science agencies that had been proposed. President Trump signed a funding bill that takes us to September 30. The National Institutes of Health received an increase of $2.6 billion. The Department of Energy received an increase of $410 million. NASA received a $230 million increase, and the National Science Foundation received a modest increase of $205 million. This budget is the end of a contentious year in consideration of budgets, with President Trump arguing for cuts and Congress looking for increases. The Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy escaped termination and received a 16% increase.

The review of the big picture says good things about the future of United States energy production. In April 2019 renewables - wind, solar, hydropower, geothermal, and biomass – produced 23% of the United States electricity, compared to 20% for coal. This is the first time such a thing has happened! The falling cost of renewable energy generation is a major factor, especially wind energy and solar energy whose costs have fallen 70% and 90%, respectively, over the last decade. Though coal’s share has fallen, coal still generates more electricity than renewables on an annual basis: 28% for coal, 17% for renewables, with natural gas at 35%.

Measles is still out there causing trouble. There is clearly, by all scientific studies, a safe an effective measles vaccine, but many people still oppose vaccination, falsely claiming it can do harm. In a late December report, some 142,000 people died worldwide in 2018 from measles. In the United States in 2019, 1276 cases of measles were reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the highest number since 1992. The number of measles cases reported in the European Region of the World Health Organization reached 92,000 for the first half of 2018, exceeding the number for all of 2019. Even worse numbers were reported for other parts of the world. Measles is totally and safely preventable through vaccination!

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