Turning Fake Data into Fake News: AI Training Set as a Trojan Horse of Misinformation

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) offers tremendous benefits to society. However, these benefits must be carefully weighed against the societal damage AI can also cause. Dangers posed by inaccurate training sets have been raised by many authors. These include racial discrimination, sexual bias, and other pernicious forms of misinformation. One remedy to such problems is to ensure that training sets used to teach AI models are correct and that the data upon which they rely are accurate. An assumption behind this correction is that data inaccuracies are inadvertent mistakes. However, a darker possibility exists: the deliberate seeding of training sets with inaccurate information for the purpose of skewing the output of AI models toward misinformation. As United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., suggested, laws are not written for the “good man,” because good people will tend to obey moral and legal principles in manners consistent with a well-functioning society even in the absence of formal laws. Rather, Justice Holmes proposed, that laws should be written with the “bad man” in mind, because bad people will push the limits of acceptable behavior, engaging in cheating, dishonesty, crime, and other societally- damaging practices, unless constrained by carefully-designed laws and their accompanying penalties. This Article raises the spectre of the deliberate sabotage of training sets used to train AI models, with the purpose of perverting the outputs of such models. Examples include fostering revisionist histories, unjustly harming or rehabilitating the reputations of people, companies, or institutions, or even promoting as true ideas that are not. Strategic and clever efforts to introduce ideas into training sets that later manifest themselves as facts could aid and abet fraud, libel, slander, or the creation of “truth,” the belief in which promote the interests of particular individuals or groups. Imagine, for example, a first investor who buys grapefruit futures, who then seeds training sets with the idea that grapefruits will become the new gold, with the result that later prospective investors who consult AI models for investment advice are informed that they should invest in grapefruit, enriching the first investor. Or, consider a malevolent political movement that hopes to rehabilitate the reputation of an abhorrent leader; if done effectively, this movement could seed training sets with sympathetic information about this leader, resulting in positive portrayals of this leader in the future outputs of trained AI models. This Article adopts the cautious attitude necessitated by Justice Holmes’ bad man, applying it to proactively stopping, or retroactively punishing and correcting, deliberate attempts to subvert the training sets of AI models. It offers legal approaches drawn from doctrines ranging from fraud, nuisance, libel, and slander, to misappropriation, privacy, and right of publicity. It balances these with protections for speech afforded by the First Amendment and other doctrines of free speech. The result is the first comprehensive attempt to prevent, respond to, and correct deliberate attempts to subvert training sets of AI models for malicious purposes

Importance of CSF-based Aβ clearance with age in humans increases with declining efficacy of blood-brain barrier/proteolytic pathways

The kinetics of amyloid beta turnover within human brain is still poorly understood. We previously found a dramatic decline in the turnover of Aβ peptides in normal aging. It was not known if brain interstitial fluid/cerebrospinal fluid (ISF/CSF) fluid exchange, CSF turnover, blood-brain barrier function or proteolysis were affected by aging or the presence of β amyloid plaques. Here, we describe a non-steady state physiological model developed to decouple CSF fluid transport from other processes. Kinetic parameters were estimated using: (1) MRI-derived brain volumes, (2) stable isotope labeling kinetics (SILK) of amyloid-β peptide (Aβ), and (3) lumbar CSF Aβ concentration during SILK. Here we show that changes in blood-brain barrier transport and/or proteolysis were largely responsible for the age-related decline in Aβ turnover rates. CSF-based clearance declined modestly in normal aging but became increasingly important due to the slowing of other processes. The magnitude of CSF-based clearance was also lower than that due to blood-brain barrier function plus proteolysis. These results suggest important roles for blood-brain barrier transport and proteolytic degradation of Aβ in the development Alzheimer\u27s Disease in humans

Blindness Due to Polymicrogyria and Asymmetrical Dilation of the Lateral Ventricles in Standard Poodles

Polymicrogyria and asymmetric dilation of the lateral ventricles were seen in related Standard poodles that had cortical blindness. Three of the affected dogs also had gait and postural abnormalities, and one of these had seizures.Two of the affected dogs were littermates. Thorough ophthalmologic and neurologic examinations (including electroretinography, electromyography, cerebrospinal fluid analysis, plain radiographs, and computerized tomography scans) revealed no significant abnormalities outside of the brain that would account for the blindness. Computerized tomography scans in three dogs demonstrated bilateral dilation of the lateral ventricles which was more severe in the right. All dogs were necropsied between 5 and 9 months of age and had strikingly similar brain abnormalities. Numerous small irregular gyri with shallow sulci covered the middle and caudal dorsal and lateral cerebral cortex. The bony ridges of the inner calvaria in this area conformed to the underlying microgyral pattern. The lateral ventricles were asymmetrically dilated with the right more severely affected, particularly in the occipital area, and the cortical grey and white matter, including the corpus callosum, were thinned in these areas. The third and fourth ventricles and mesencephalic aqueduct were normal. Histologically, there was thinning and simplification of the cortical grey matter with an increased density of medium to large neurons. The corona radiata and subcortical white matter were also thinner than normal with no evidence of demyelination of astrocytic scarring. This congenital anomaly of the visual cortex causing blindness in the Standard Poodle appears to be inherited as an autosomal recessive trait

Type II Quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: V. Imaging host galaxies with the Hubble Space Telescope

Type II quasars are luminous Active Galactic Nuclei whose centers are obscured by large amounts of gas and dust. In this paper we present 3-band HST images of nine type II quasars with redshifts 0.2 < z < 0.4 selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey based on their emission line properties. The intrinsic luminosities of these AGN are estimated to be -24 > M_B > -26, but optical obscuration allows their host galaxies to be studied unencumbered by bright nuclei. Each object has been imaged in three continuum filters (`UV', `blue' and `yellow') placed between the strong emission lines. The spectacular, high quality images reveal a wealth of details about the structure of the host galaxies and their environments. Six of the nine galaxies in the sample are ellipticals with de Vaucouleurs light profiles, one object has a well-defined disk component and the remaining two have marginal disks. Stellar populations of type II quasar hosts are more luminous (by a median of 0.3-0.7 mag, depending on the wavelength) and bluer (by about 0.4 mag) than are M* galaxies at the same redshift. When smooth fits to stellar light are subtracted from the images, we find both positive and negative residuals that become more prominent toward shorter wavelengths. We argue that the negative residuals are due to kpc-scale dust obscuration, while most positive residuals are due to the light from the nucleus scattered off interstellar material in the host galaxy. Scattered light makes a significant contribution to the broad band continuum emission and can be the dominant component of the extended emission in the UV in extreme cases.Comment: 51 pages, including 12 grey scale figures, 4 color figures, 5 tables. In press in AJ. Version with higher-resolution images available at http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~nadia/qso2.html. (Minor changes in response to the referee report

A Leptin-regulated Circuit Controls Glucose Mobilization During Noxious Stimuli

Adipocytes secrete the hormone leptin to signal the sufficiency of energy stores. Reductions in circulating leptin concentrations reflect a negative energy balance, which augments sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activation in response to metabolically demanding emergencies. This process ensures adequate glucose mobilization despite low energy stores. We report that leptin receptor–expressing neurons (LepRb neurons) in the periaqueductal gray (PAG), the largest population of LepRb neurons in the brain stem, mediate this process. Application of noxious stimuli, which often signal the need to mobilize glucose to support an appropriate response, activated PAG LepRb neurons, which project to and activate parabrachial nucleus (PBN) neurons that control SNS activation and glucose mobilization. Furthermore, activating PAG LepRb neurons increased SNS activity and blood glucose concentrations, while ablating LepRb in PAG neurons augmented glucose mobilization in response to noxious stimuli. Thus, decreased leptin action on PAG LepRb neurons augments the autonomic response to noxious stimuli, ensuring sufficient glucose mobilization during periods of acute demand in the face of diminished energy stores

Late-Binding Scholarship in the Age of AI

Scholarly processes play a pivotal role in discovering, challenging, improving, advancing, synthesizing, codifying, and disseminating knowledge. Since the 17th Century, both the quality and quantity of knowledge that scholarship has produced has increased tremendously, granting academic research a pivotal role in ensuring material and social progress. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to enable a new leap in the creation of scholarly content. New forms of engagement with AI systems, such as collaborations with large language models like GPT-3, offer affordances that will change the nature of both the scholarly process and the artifacts it produces

Intravascular ultrasound scanning improves long-term patency of iliac lesions treated with balloon angioplasty and primary stenting

AbstractPurpose: Underdeployment of an intravascular stent has been identified as a cause of restenosis or occlusion of a treated arterial lesion. Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) has been shown to initially improve the anatomic and clinical stenting. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the use of IVUS increased long-term patency of this intervention. Methods: Between March 1992 and October 1995, 71 limbs (52 patients) with symptomatic aortoiliac occlusive disease underwent balloon angioplasty with primary stenting. IVUS and arteriography were used in 49 limbs (36 patients) to evaluate stent deployment. Arteriography alone was used in 22 limbs (16 patients) to evaluate stent deployment. Patients were captured prospectively in a vascular registry and retrospectively reviewed. Results: Mean age of patients treated with IVUS was 61.1 ± 9.0 years (range, 38-85) versus 70.0 ± 10.1 years (range, 57-87) in patients treated without IVUS (P <.01). There was no difference between the groups with respect to preoperative comorbidities, ankle-brachial indices, or number of stents per limb. Mean follow-up for IVUS patients was 62.1 ± 7.3 months (range, 15-81) and 57.9 ± 8.7 months (range, 8-80) for patients treated without IVUS (P = not significant). In 40% (20/49) of limbs, IVUS demonstrated inadequate stent deployment at the time of the original procedure. Kaplan-Meier 3- and 6-year primary patency estimates were 100% and 100% in the IVUS group and 82% and 69%, respectively, in limbs treated without IVUS (P <.001). There have been no secondary procedures performed in limbs treated with IVUS and a 23% (5/22) secondary intervention rate in the non-IVUS group (P <.05). Overall Kaplan-Meier survival estimates at 3 and 6 years for all patients were 84% and 67%, respectively. Conclusion: Balloon angioplasty and primary stenting of symptomatic aortoiliac occlusive lesions is a durable treatment option. Long-term follow-up of treated patients shows outcomes that are comparable with direct surgical intervention. IVUS significantly improved the long-term patency of iliac arterial lesions treated with balloon angioplasty and stenting by defining the appropriate angioplasty diameter endpoint and adequacy of stent deployment. (J Vasc Surg 2002;35:316-23.

Partition of Environmental Chemicals between Maternal and Fetal Blood and Tissues

Passage of environmental chemicals across the placenta has important toxicological consequences, as well as for choosing samples for analysis and for interpreting the results. To obtain systematic data, we collected in 2000 maternal and cord blood, cord tissue, placenta, and milk in connection with births in the Faroe Islands, where exposures to marine contaminants is increased. In 15 sample sets, we measured a total of 87 environmental chemicals, almost all of which were detected both in maternal and fetal tissues. The maternal serum lipid-based concentrations of organohalogen compounds averaged 1.7 times those of cord serum, 2.8 times those of cord tissue and placenta, and 0.7 those of milk. For organohalogen compounds detectable in all matrices, a high degree of correlation between concentrations in maternal serum and the other tissues investigated was generally observed (r2 > 0.5). Greater degree of chlorination resulted in lower transfer from maternal serum into milk. Concentrations of pentachlorbenzene, γ-hexachlorocyclohexane, and several polychlorinated biphenyl congeners with low chlorination were higher in fetal samples and showed poor correlation with maternal levels. Perfluorinated compounds occurred in lower concentrations in cord serum than in maternal serum. Cadmium, lead, mercury, and selenium were all detected in fetal samples, but only mercury showed close correlations among concentrations in different matrices. Although the environmental chemicals examined pass through the placenta and are excreted into milk, partitions between maternal and fetal samples are not uniform