If You Could Read My Mind - Wait, You Can?

Over the years, one area of tech/health tech I have avoided writing about are brain-computer interfaces (B.C.I.). In part, it was because I thought they were kind of creepy, and, in larger part, because I was increasing finding Elon Musk, whose Neuralink is one of the leaders in the field, even more creepy. But an article in The New York Times Magazine by Linda Kinstler rang alarm bells in my head – and I sure hope no one is listening to them.

This is your brain in fMRI. Credit: Max Planck Institure

Her article, Big Tech Wants Direct Access to Our Brains, doesn’t just discuss some of the technological advances in the field, which are, admittedly, quite impressive. No, what caught my attention was her larger point that it’s time – it’s past time – that we started taking the issue of the privacy of what goes on inside our heads very seriously.

Because we are at the point, or fast approaching it, when those private thoughts of ours are no longer private.

The ostensible purpose of B.C.I.s has usually been as for assistance to people with disabilities, such as people who are paralyzed. Being able to move a cursor or even a limb could change their lives. It might even allow some to speak or even see. All are great use cases, with some track record of successes.

B.C.I.s have tended to go down one of two paths. One uses external signals, such as through electroencephalography (EEG) and electrooculography (EOG), to try to decipher what your brain is doing. The other, as Neuralink uses, is an implant directly in your brain to sense and interrupt activity. The latter approach has the advantage of more specific readings, but has the obvious drawback of requiring surgery and wires in your brain.

There’s a competition held every four years called Cybathlon, sponsored by ETH Zurich, that “acts as a platform that challenges teams from all over the world to develop assistive technologies suitable for everyday use with and for people with disabilities.” A profile of it in NYT quoted the second place finisher, who uses the external signals approach but lost to a team using implants: “We weren’t in the same league as the Pittsburgh people. They’re playing chess and we’re playing checkers.”  He’s now considering implants.  

A Cybathlon 2024 competitor. Credit: Cybathlon ETH Zurich

Fine, you say. I can protect my mental privacy simply by not getting implants, right?  Not so fast. A new paper in Science Advances discusses progress in “mind captioning.” I.e.:

We successfully generated descriptive text representing visual content experienced during perception and mental imagery by aligning semantic features of text with those linearly decoded from human brain activity…Together, these factors facilitate the direct translation of brain representations into text, resulting in optimally aligned descriptions of visual semantic information decoded from the brain. These descriptions were well structured, accurately capturing individual components and their interrelations without using the language network, thus suggesting the existence of fine-grained semantic information outside this network. Our method enables the intelligible interpretation of internal thoughts, demonstrating the feasibility of nonverbal thought–based brain-to-text communication.

The model predicts what a person is looking at “with a lot of detail”, says Alex Huth, a computational neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley who has done related research. “This is hard to do. It’s surprising you can get that much detail.”

“Surprising” is one way to describe it. “Exciting” could be another.  For some people, though, “terrifying” might be what first comes to mind.

The mind captioning uses fMRI and  AI to do the mind captioning, and the participants were fully aware of what was going on. None of the researchers suggest that the technique can tell exactly what people are thinking. “Nobody has shown you can do that, yet,” says Professor Huth.

 It’s that “yet” that worries me.

Dr. Kinstler points out that’s not all we have to worry about: “Advances in optogenetics, a scientific technique that uses light to stimulate or suppress individual, genetically modified neurons, could allow scientists to “write” the brain as well, potentially altering human understanding and behavior.”

“What’s coming is A.I. and neurotechnology integrated with our everyday devices,” Nita Farahany, a professor of law and philosophy at Duke University who studies emerging technologies, told Dr. Kinstler. “Basically, what we are looking at is brain-to-A.I. direct interactions. These things are going to be ubiquitous. It could amount to your sense of self being essentially overwritten.” 

Now are you worried?

Dr. Kinstler notes that some countries – not including the U.S., of course – have passed neural privacy laws. California, Colorado, Montana and Connecticut have passed neural data privacy laws, but the Future of Privacy Forum details how each is different and that there is not even a common agreement on exactly what “neural data” is, much less how best to safeguard it. As is typical, the technology is way outpacing the regulation.

Credit: Future of Privacy Forum

“While many are concerned about technologies that can “read minds,” such a tool does not currently exist per se, and in many cases nonneural data can reveal the same information,” writes Jameson Spivack, Deputy Director for Artificial Intelligence for FPF. “As such, focusing too narrowly on “thoughts” or “brain activity” could exclude some of the most sensitive and intimate personal characteristics that people want to protect. In finding the right balance, lawmakers should be clear about what potential uses or outcomes on which they would like to focus.”

I.e., we can’t even define the problem well enough yet.  

Dr. Kinstler describes how people have been talking about this issue literally for decades, with little progress on the legislative/regulatory front. We may be at the point where debate is no longer academic. Professor Farahany warns that having the ability to control ones thoughts and feelings ““is a precondition to any other concept of liberty, in that, if the very scaffolding of thought itself is manipulated, undermined, interfered with, then any other way in which you would exercise your liberties is meaningless, because you are no longer a self-determined human at that point.”

In 2025 America, this does not seem like an idle threat.

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In this digital world, we’ve gradually been losing our privacy. Our emails aren’t private? Oh, OK. Big tech is tracking our shopping? Well, we’ll get better offers. Social media mines our data to best manipulate us? Yes, but think of the followers we might gain. Surveillance camera can track our every move? But we need it to fight crime!

We grumble but mostly have accepted these (and other) losses of privacy. But when it comes to the possibility of technology reading our thoughts, much less directly manipulating them, we cannot afford to keep dithering.

Support Your Neighborhood Scientist

These are, it must be said, grim times for American science. Between the Trump budget cuts, the Trump attacks on leading research universities, and the normalization of misinformation/ disinformation, scientists are losing their jobs, fleeing to other countries, or just trying to keep their heads down in hopes of being able to just, you know, keep doing science.

Seriously: you should. Credit: Stand Up for Science

But some scientists are fighting back, and more power to them. Literally.

Lest you think I’m being Chicken Little, warning prematurely that the sky is falling, there continue to be warning signs. Virginia Gewin, writing in Nature, reports Insiders warn how dismantling federal agencies could put science at risk. A former EPA official told her: “It’s not just EPA. Science is being destroyed across many agencies.” Even worse, one former official warned: “Now they are starting to proffer misinformation and putting a government seal on it.”  

A third researcher added: “The damage to the next generation of scientists is what I worry the most about. I’ve been advising students to look for other jobs.”

It’s not just that students are looking for jobs outside of the government. Katrina Northrop and Rudy Lu write in The Washington Post about the brain drain going to China. “Over the past decade,” they say, “there has been a rush of scholars — many with some family connection to China — moving across the Pacific, drawn by Beijing’s full-throttle drive to become a scientific superpower.” They cite 50 tenure track scholars of Chinese descent who have left U.S. universities for China. Most are in STEM fields.

“The U.S. is increasingly skeptical of science — whether it’s climate, health or other areas,” Jimmy Goodrich, an expert on Chinese science and technology at the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, told them. “While in China, science is being embraced as a key solution to move the country forward into the future.”

They note how four years ago the U.S. spent four times as much in R&D than China, whereas now the spending is basically even, at best.

I keep in mind the warning of Dan Wang, a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution:

Think about it this way: China is an engineering state, which treats construction projects and technological primacy as the solution to all of its problems, whereas the United States is a lawyerly society, obsessed with protecting wealth by making rules rather than producing material goods.

We’ve seen what a government of lawyers does, creating laws and regulations that protect big corporations and the ultra-rich, while making everything so complex that, voila, more lawyers are needed. Maybe it’s time to see what a government of scientists could do.

When scientists (or engineers) are in charge, we can put a man on the moon within a decade or create a pandemic vaccine in months. When lawyers are in charge we get Congresses that can’t even pass a budget.  

In The Atlantic, Katherine J. Wu discusses a new wave of scientists who are running for public office. Core to that effort is 314 Action, which claims it is “the only organization in the nation focused on recruiting, training, and electing Democrats with a background in science to public office.” Shaughnessy Naughton, the president of 314 Action, told Ms. Wu the organization had fielded 700 applications from scientists interested in becoming candidates just this year, which is seven times what it would normally expect.

Credit: 314 Action

Ms. Wu cites data from Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics that only 3 percent of state legislators are scientists, engineers, or health-care professionals – and most of those are Republicans. 314 action thinks it can help change that. Its website declares:

Bottom line: when candidates run on their science credentials and have the backing to get their message out there, they win. 314 Action candidates are scientists first, not politicians. We’re fighting to elect scientists who can tackle urgent shared challenges – like the climate crisis, reproductive rights, and healthcare access –  and secure a better future for us all. 

It claims to have raised some $8.6m and help elect 400 endorsed candidates, including 4 U.S. Senators, 13 members of the U.S. House, 9 candidates for down-ballot statewide offices, and over 300 candidates at the state and municipal level. Ms. Wu reports that Hawaii’s Josh Green, the only Democratic physician currently serving in a state governorship, has partnered with 314 Action to launch a $25 million campaign to elect 100 new Democratic physicians to office by 2030.

“Politics came for us,” pediatrician Annie Andrews told Ms. Wu. “You can’t fight bad politics by staying apolitical.”

Running for office is only one way for scientists (or people who care about science) to fight back. Take Stand Up for Science, which believes in protesting loudly and proudly. Founded just this year in response to Trump Administration actions, Stand Up for Science describes itself as “a political activism organization dedicated to defending and advancing America’s scientific ecosystem, a cornerstone of democracy, freedom, and progress.”

Its mission:

We believe that science is the lifeblood of American democracy and freedom. With a bold strategy combining activism, messaging campaigns, grassroots organizing, and political advocacy, we’re mobilizing the fight for science and democracy, now and for generations to come.

SUFS was active in the No Kings protests, and is conducting an important – and amusing -- effort to impeach HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. called “Impeach the Quack,” complete with toy ducks.

Founder and Chief Executive Officer Colette Delawalla, MA, MS manages to run the organization while working on her Ph.D. (and apparently being a mom). She saw the need as soon as Trump was inaugurated. “You’ve got these legacy organizations that have simply not thought it was that important to communicate with the public in a meaningful way,” she told NOTUS. “Any of these organizations — and I know this because I’ve done it — on Jan. 21, 2025, could have stood up, in less than 24 hours, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit arm of what they’re already doing, and granted over some money, set up a little team, and gotten political.” Too few did, so she created her own organization.

Both 314 Action and Stand Up for Science deserve our support.

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Scientists are no angels (e.g., James Watson, William Shockley), Maybe putting them in charge isn’t the answer. But, really, could they do any worse than our current politicians? We’re quickly moving into an era of AI, quantum computing, synthetic biology, and a host of other advances, while battling climate change, microplastics, income inequality, and many other challenges. Who do you think will be best able to deal with them: lawyers, or scientists?  

Life Is Geometry

In 2025, we’ve got DNA all figured out, right?  It’s been over fifty years since Crick and Watson (and Franklin) discovered the double helix structure. We know that permutations of just four chemical bases (A, C, T, and G) allow the vast genetic complexity and diversity in the world. We’ve done the Humam Genome Project. We can edit DNA using CRISPR. Heck, we’re even working on synthetic DNA. We’re busy finding other uses for DNA, like computing, storage, or robots. Yep, we’re on top of DNA.

Super-resolution imaging reveals the 3D geometry of the genome. Credit: Northwestern University

Not so fast. Researchers at Northwestern University say we’ve been missing something: a geometric code embedded in genomes that helps cells store and process information. It’s not just combinations of chemical bases that make DNA work; there is also a “geometric language” going on, one that we weren’t hearing.

Wait, what?

The research - Geometrically Encoded Positioning of Introns, Intergenic Segments, and Exons in the Human Genome – was led by Professor Vadim Backman, Sachs Family Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Medicine at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering, and director of its Center for Physical Genomics and Engineering. The new research indicates, he says, that: “Rather than a predetermined script based on fixed genetic instruction sets, we humans are living, breathing computational systems that have been evolving in complexity and power for millions of years.”

The Northwestern press release elaborates:

The geometric code is the blueprint for how DNA forms nanoscale packing domains that create physical "memory nodes" — functional units that store and stabilize transcriptional states. In essence, it allows the genome to operate as a living computational system, adapting gene usage based on cellular history. These memory nodes are not random; geometry appears to have been selected over millions of years to optimize enzyme access, embedding biological computation directly into physical structure.

Somehow I don’t think Crick and Watson saw that coming, much less either Euclid or John von Neumann.

Coauthor Igal Szleifer, Christina Enroth-Cugell Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering, adds: “We are learning to read and write the language of cellular memories. These ‘memory nodes’ are living physical objects resembling microprocessors. They have precise rules based on their physical, chemical, and biological properties that encode cell behavior.”

“Living, breathing computational systems”? “Microprocessors”? This is DNA computing at a new level.

Electron microscopy resolves a 3D packing domain— the physical “memory node”
of the human genome. Credit: Northwestern Engineering

The study suggests that evolution came about not just by finding new combinations of DNA but also from new ways to fold it, using those physical structures to store genetic information. Indeed, one of the researchers’ hypothesis is that development of the geometric code helped lead to the explosion of body types witnessed in the Cambrian Explosion, when life went from simple single and multicellular organisms to a vast array of life forms.

Coauthor Kyle MacQuarrie, assistant professor of pediatrics at the Feinberg School of Medicine, points out that we shouldn’t be surprised it took this long to realize the geometric code: “We’ve spent 70 years learning to read the genetic code. Understanding this new geometric code became possible only through recent advances in globally-unique imaging, modeling, and computational science—developed right here at Northwestern.” (Nice extra plug there for Northwestern, Dr. MacQuarrie.)

Coauthor Luay Almassalha, also from the Feinberg School of Medicine, notes: “While the genetic code is much like the words in a dictionary, the newly discovered ‘geometric code’ turns words into a living language that all our cells speak. Pairing the words (genetic code) and the language (geometric code) may enable the ability to finally read and write cellular memory.”

I love the distinction between the words and the actual language. We’ve been using a dictionary and not realizing we need a phrase book.   

I recently read about, and was impressed by, something called MetaGraph, a tool developed at ETH Zurich to search DNA databases. "It's a kind of Google for DNA," as Professor Gunnar Rätsch, data scientist at the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich, puts it. This “DNA search engine” makes it much easier, faster, and cheaper to search for DNA sequences and compare them to other sequences. Cool as that is, the existence of the geometric code means that the ETH Zurich folks may have some additional work to do, as is true of lots of other people working with DNA.

I hate to say it’s a whole new ball game, but there certainly are some important new rules.

The presence of this geometric code has implications for our health. It may not always be DNA mutations that cause problems; our DNA structures may sometimes be falling apart. Dr. Almassalha says: “Instead of a puzzle of genetic words, the geometric code lets cells build elaborate tissues, such as brains or skin. But with age, this language loses its fidelity. This decay results in neurodegeneration, cancer, or other diseases of aging.”

This opens up all sorts of new avenues for research, and, potentially, treatments. “The next step is to fully learn the engineering principles of the geometric code so we can repair dysregulated cell memories or create entirely new ones,” Professor Backman says. “Current approaches to aging try to reset cells back to a factory default state. The geometric code works differently. Cell memories are physical structures enhanced by experience. Revitalizing cells resembles restoring the clarity of a well-loved book — bringing back the stories our cells already know how to tell.”

This isn’t CRISPR. This isn’t mRNA. This is a new way of thinking about cells and our genome. This is a whole new step in computational biology, and it may be foundational in 22^nd century medicine.

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If you are a physics or cosmology buff, you may have heard the expression “The universe is geometry.” E.g., Einstein’s general theory of relativity indicates gravity is not a force but, rather, the result of distortions in spacetime. Similarly, whether the universe is flat (Euclidian), positively curved (spherical), or negatively curved (hyperbolic) has profound implications for the fate of the universe. In fact, some scientists believe that geometry may explain everything from the smallest particles to the universe itself.

So it pleases me to think that life itself may owe much to geometry as well.

Halo, Heresy, and Healthcare

If you are of a certain age – say, mine, that is to say, a Baby Boomer – last week’s announcement that Microsoft was going to release a new version of Halo on Sony’s PlayStation console may have passed you by. So what, you might have said? If, on the other hand, you are one of the three-fourths of Americans who play video games, you might have more immediately grasped the significance.

It's a big deal that Halo is on PlayStation. Credit: Halo/Xbox

The gaming industry is like porn industry in that it tends to be early on the technology front. Since I don’t follow the porn industry, I try to watch the gaming industry to see what trends in it may suggest for the future of other industries, especially healthcare.

In case you weren’t aware, Halo is a Microsoft game, and has historically been played on Microsoft’s Xbox console. Sony’s PlayStation is Microsoft biggest competitor, and has been winning the war handily. So making Halo available on PlayStation is a somewhat surprising move. As Zachary Small wrote in The New York Times: “It is the equivalent of Disney letting Mickey Mouse roam Universal Studios.”

Or, as Grant St. Clair marveled in Boing Boing:

I cannot possibly emphasize how big a deal this is, but odds are you already know yourself. Halo is bar none the biggest IP Xbox has, and historically one of the biggest draws to the console. It'd be like Nintendo suddenly putting Super Mario Galaxy on Steam. This is a tacit admission that Xbox has lost the hardware war — the writing was on the wall already, granted, but this italicizes and underlines it.

A gamer told BBC Newsbeat that the announcement was “massive” and “broke the internet a little bit.” She’s happy about the news, adding: "I know there's a bit of controversy about it coming to PlayStation, but I don't see any reason why it should be like that at all. I just think it's a win for all gamers."

So, whether you realize it or not, this is kind of a big deal.

Microsoft has desperately been trying to stay relevant in gaming. A couple years ago Microsoft shelled out $70 billion to acquire Activision Blizzard, and a couple years prior to that paid $7.5b for ZeniMax Media. Still, though, as Joost van Dreunen, a market analyst and professor at New York University, told Mr. Small: “When it comes to consoles, Xbox has always been the bridesmaid and never the bride. They just haven’t been able to outmaneuver PlayStation and Nintendo.”

It may have found a way. Earlier this year Microsoft made Gears of War and Forza Horizon 5  available on PlayStation, and Microsoft Flight Simulator will join them later this year. Indeed, Mr. Small points out: “Between April and July, six of the top 10 best-selling games on Sony’s consoles were Microsoft properties.”

I.e., if you can’t beat them, join them.

“We are all seeking to meet people where they are,” Matt Booty, the president of Xbox game content and studios, told Mr. Small. Even more interesting, he further explained: “Our biggest competition isn’t another console. We are competing more and more with everything from TikTok to movies.”

Lesson #1: your competitors are not necessarily the ones you think they are.

The new version – Halo: Campaign Evolved – is a remake of the original Halo game, first released in 2001. “We wanted to start where it all began, with the original campaign that defined Halo,” Executive Producer Damon Conn explains. It has been remade using Unreal Engine 5 instead of the proprietary Halo game engine that the game had always been built on, marking another shift to outside the Microsoft ecosystem.

Credit: Halo/Xbox

Writing in the PlayStation Blog, Brian “ske7ch” Jarrard, Community Director, Halo Studios explains:

What makes Halo special isn’t just the gameplay, it’s who you play it with. Bringing Halo to PlayStation means even more players can share in that experience. In Halo: Campaign Evolved, you can jump into four-player online co-op with friends or kick it old school with two-player couch co-op on your PlayStation- now with cross-play and cross-progression across console and PC.

“We’re so excited about bringing Halo to those who may not have had chance to play it in the past,” Executive Producer Damon Conn said. “At its heart, Halo is about connection, we’re thrilled to meet a new generation of players on their platforms of choice to fall in love with Halo the same way we did. We’re not trying to rewrite Halo’s legacy – we’re trying to immerse you in it like never before.”

“This is Halo for everyone.”

When asked if the next step was a version of Halo (or other games) for Nintendo Switch, Mr. Conn would only coyly repeat: “We’re excited to launch this in 2026 on Xbox, Xbox on PC, Steam, and PlayStation.” But don’t be surprised.

There is, interestingly enough, some controversy about whether the Halo team is using generative AI to help develop the reenvisioned game. The team denies it, but game director Greg Hermann admitted to Alyssa Mercante of Rolling Stone: “It’s a tool in a toolbox. I may go a little off message here, but some of that gets very challenging when we look at how integrated AI is becoming within our tooling. We use Photoshop. There’s generative fill, for example. The boundary lines can get a little fuzzy.”

It reminds me that Microsoft is pursuing a dual strategy not just in gaming platforms but also with AI, having its own AI team and products while also being a major investor in OpenAI and its products.  

Lesson #2: Hedge your bets.

Here are my two takes from the above for healthcare:

• If your business model relies on a proprietary platform, you may want to think whether that is actually giving you an advantage, or it is just cutting off access to lots of potential new customers. If you are an insurer, think about, say, your provider network; if you are a health system, think about, perhaps, your medical record.  
• If you think of your competitors in traditional terms – e.g., other health systems or other health insurers – you should realize that you are missing the bigger picture. We’re living in an age of misinformation, peddled by people/companies way outside “mainstream medicine,” and more people are listening to them. If you don’t compete against them, you’re going to lose customers.

I’m no more likely to play Halo on PlayStation than I was on Xbox – which is to say, not at all -- but that doesn’t mean I can’t learn lessons from it. Hopefully healthcare will as well.

Let a Thousand DNA Flowers Bloom

When I saw a headline about “DNA flowers,” I was nonplused. I mean: aren’t all flowers made out of DNA, like every living thing on our planet? Well, it turns out that the DNA flowers are actually soft robots – make that nanobots – so my interest was definitely piqued.

Visualization of DNA flowers Credit: Justin Hill, Philip Rosenberg, and Ronit Freeman

The DNA flowers are out of the Freeman Lab at the University of North Carolina, led by Dr. Ronit Freeman, and the research about them was just published in Nature Nanotechnology with the less sexy title “Reversible metamorphosis of hierarchical DNA-organic crystal.”  Had I seen that before “DNA flowers” I probably would have passed it over, so I’m glad someone has an eye towards marketing.

Designer Daniel Burham famously said: “Make no little plans,” and I kind of think he’d like Dr. Freeman. Her bio says she has formal training in computer science, chemistry, nanotechnology, and regenerative medicine (plus even ballroom dancing, if you’re counting), and she probably needs all that training, because her primary interest is “in supramolecular self-assembly, a field where common biological materials like DNA and proteins are seen not simply as information carriers, but also as tunable structural materials for next-generation sensors, nano robots, drug breakthroughs, and clinical tools.”

Accordingly, what the Lab has done now is to combine DNA with inorganic materials to allow them to respond to their environment. Professor Freeman says: "We take inspiration from nature's designs, like blooming flowers or growing tissue, and translate them into technology that could one day think, move, and adapt on its own,"

Indeed, the Freman Lab prides itself on “bioinspired technologies,” the purpose of which is: “We engineer living and synthetic materials to accelerate healthier outcomes for global communities.” The website talks about “building block designs.” featuring hierarchical self-assembly, temporal structural reconfiguration, and adaptive behavior.

Hence, DNA flowers. 

The flowers are actually shaped like flowers, although they are microscopic, and what makes them both interesting and potentially useful is that the various strands of DNA allow them to move, open or close, or trigger chemical reactions, based on environmental cues like temperature, acidity, or chemical signals. The DNA sequences guide nanoparticles to organize into complex structures, which can reverse shape as desired.  

"People would love to have smart capsules that would automatically activate medication when it detects disease and stops when it is healed. In principle, this could be possible with our shapeshifting materials," said Professor Freeman. “In the future, swallowable or implantable shape-changing flowers could be designed to deliver a targeted dose of drugs, perform a biopsy, or clear a blood clot."

Yeah, I’d love that, and I bet you would too.

The team acknowledges that the technology is in the early stages, but see a future where, say, a DNA flower is injected into a cancer patient, in whom it travels to a tumor, whose acidity causes the petals to release a medication or even take a tiny tissue sample. When the tumor is gone the DNA flower would deactivate until/unless new environmental triggers reactivate it.  

Thinking beyond healthcare, the team sees their creations helping to clean up environmental contamination, or as a great digital storage device -- up to two trillion gigabytes in just a teaspoon. 

The fact that the DNA flowers can sense and respond to their environment makes the team believe these are a major step forward in bridging the gap between living systems and machines. We’re going to see more of that in the rest of the 21^st century.

Credit: Freeman Lab

The Freeman lab has some big ambitions. It wants to discover “new and creative means of detecting viruses, treating illnesses, effectively targeting and delivering payloads, and interfacing with natural biology.” Four key ways it is attacking that goal are:

Sensing: “developing rapid testing technologies that are easy to use, location independent, robust in design, and cost effective for production.”: “In recognizing, respecting and studying natural mechanisms, we are able to mimic them in order to develop effective biotherapies and advance biomedical engineering.”

Biomimicry: “In recognizing, respecting and studying natural mechanisms, we are able to mimic them in order to develop effective biotherapies and advance biomedical engineering.”

Therapeutics: “This can involve administering an external drug, developing a safe and effective means to deliver that drug to the desired site, or developing a means to program natural biology to reverse the effects of a disease.”

Soft matter: “Soft Matter is an umbrella term for sciences concerned with topics ranging from textile materials, to fluid mechanics, granular distribution, biological materials and much more.”  

All very cool, all thinking about a future that is different than the past, so kudos to them. DNA flowers aren’t the first thing the Freeman Lab has done, and I’m pretty sure they won’t be the last. I can’t wait to see what’s next.

And you though Bill Belichick went to UNC for the football…

Trade Ya Subsidies For a Government

As you may have heard, the federal government is currently shut down, although for many federal workers – those deemed “essential” – that just means they keep on working but don’t get paid (and, in fact, some might never get paid). The cause is the now-standard failure of Congress to pass a budget. As it often does in these instances, the House did pass a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government open (for seven weeks), and Senate Republicans are willing to go along, but Senate Democrats are balking. Even though they’re usually the ones who advocate “clean’ CRs, this time they’re holding out to include some other legislative fixes. Their key demand: continuing the expanded ACA premium tax credits.  

I am a little puzzled why this is the hill upon which they’re willing to keep the government shut down.

Let’s back up. When ACA was passed in 2010, a crucial component was subsidies to help low- income people afford ACA coverage (along with subsidies for cost-sharing features like deductibles). Subsidies were, and are, crucial for the ACA marketplace to survive. These subsidies came in the form of premium tax credits.

If you recall the dismal individual health insurance marketplace pre-ACA, individuals couldn’t get coverage unless they passed medical underwriting, and, even then, preexisting conditions exclusions applied.  As a result, few qualified and everyone complained. ACA did away with medical underwriting and pre-existing conditions exclusions, but the only way to ensure that enough healthy people would join the risk pool was to generously subsidize their coverage, much as employers do with employment-based health insurance. Thus the premium tax credits.

The trade-off worked for almost ten years. About ten million people got coverage through the exchanges. Then the pandemic hit. People needed coverage more than ever, yet many people’s incomes crashed. So in 2021 Congress passed “enhanced” premium tax credits as part of the American Rescue plan Act. They increased the amounts of the credits and made them available to some higher income families. Those expanded credits were extended to the end of 2025 as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.

It is those expanded premium tax credits that are expiring. The original credits would remain. Things would go back to the way they were pre-pandemic (although, of course, premiums are now higher due to inflation). It’d be more of a setback than a catastrophe.

The expanded tax credits did have a dramatic impact. Enrollment went from about ten million to over 24 million – 22 million of whom had the expanded credits. So it certainly is a non-trivial matter if they expire. KFF estimates that average premiums would double in 2026.

Still, though, CBO estimates loss of the expanded credits would result in about 3.8 million people losing coverage, which is a far cry from the 14 million whom gained coverage since they were implemented.

I’m not sure if the CBO is being overly optimistic, or if ACA has taught people to appreciate their coverage.

Everyone in Congress knew, or should have known, that these tax credits were expiring this year. Congress could have ensured that they persisted longer when they extended them as part of IRA. Congress could have extended then as part of H.R.1 (the so-called Big, Beautiful Bill). But neither of those happened, so here we are.

 House and Senate Republicans have indicated an openness to extending them, although not as a condition of ending the shutdown, but appear to be in no hurry. Speaker Mike Johnson sees only the December 31 ending date of the expanded credits and says: “We have effectively three months to negotiate. In the White House and in the halls of Congress, that’s like an eternity.”

That ignores, of course, that open enrollment starts November 1, and insurers are already preparing their materials, so something like whether an expanded tax credit would be available or not would seem like an important factor for anyone making such a decision.

This is not an issue that is primarily a Democrat one. Most people with ACA coverage live in Republican districts. Over three-quarters of Americans think the tax credits should be extended – including 59% of Republicans. Even 57% of self-identified MAGA supporters want them extended. MAGA stalwart Margorie Taylor Greene has been vocal about the need to extend them. So you’d have to think that, one way or another, they’re likely to get extended.

So why allow the government to be shut down over them?

There are plenty of other issues the Democrats could be striking over, such as Medicaid cuts. The cuts to Medicaid that HR1 made are estimated to cause more than twice as many people to lose Medicaid coverage as ACA coverage, not to mention the huge impacts on state Medicaid budgets due to loss of provider taxes. But reversing those Medicaid cuts cost way more than the ACA premium tax credits, would require Republicans to retreat from favorite policy positions like work requirements, and won’t, for the most part, impact people as soon as the premium tax credits. Plus, the work requirements may blow up on their own due to the administrative difficulties.  The Democrats have mentioned reversing the Medicaid cuts as part of the negotiation, but don’t appear to have them as part of their red line.  

Or the Democrats could insist that Congress regain its Constitutional duties about controlling federal spending or enacting tariffs, rather than abdicating those to the Administration, but finding enough Congressional Republicans who care more about the Constitution than risking Trump’s ire is probably a fool’s errand. So premium tax credits it is.

Look, I think the subsidies should be extended. Too many people now rely on them, especially with so little notice. Even more, I think they probably will be; there’s too much risk of blowback to swing Republican districts for the GOP to simply ignore the problem. But I think it’s more likely to Republicans can wait the Democrats out, betting on pealing off five more Democrat Senators to pass the CR. They can then deal with the tax credits late in the year, damage to the enrollment process be damned.

If anything, the furor over the subsidies highlights a central flaw with ACA: it focused on expanding coverage, not on reforming our health care system. As a result, costs continue to rise unabated, making subsidies all-the-more important. But that’s not a sustainable approach. At some point, we’re going to have to rationalize how much we pay for health care and what we should be paying for.  But, alas, we’re nowhere near that point.

The Vultures Are Circling Wikipedia

I must admit, for several years now I’ve worried that my beloved Wikipedia could not survive in an AI era. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine that in a few years we all won’t just ask our AI assistant/overlord when we want information, although the AI tendency to hallucinate and spit out a totally plausible collection of truth and make-believe creates a bar that will have to be overcome.

Credit: Wikipedia

The good news is that AI doesn’t seem to be winning this particular battle yet. The bad news is that the war on “woke” may be a bigger threat, at least in the short term.

A new paper from researchers at Kings College London looked at the impact of ChatGPT on Wikipedia engagement, and offered cautious hope: “We find no evidence of an overall decline in Wikipedia engagement across the four metrics studied. Instead, page views and visitor numbers increased in the period following ChatGPT’s launch.” They did, however, find slower growth in areas where ChatGPT was available.

The authors cite several studies that indicate that, to date, ChatGPT responses are not viewed as favorably as Wikipedia’s, and point out that Wikipedia readers are not keen to see generative AI summaries of its articles. They note that ChatGPT’s capabilities are evolving, and cite other research that found that up to 5% of newly created articles in the English Wikipedia were written using generative AI tools. AI may be coming, but it’s not quite ready for Wikipedia-level prime time yet.

The authors see other risks to Wikipedia from AI. Professor Elena Simperl, Professor of Computer Science at King’s and Co-Director of the King’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence, said:

Our work did not confirm the most alarmist scenario, but we’re not out of the woods yet. AI developers are letting their scrapers loose on Wikipedia to train them on high quality data, pushing up traffic to levels where Wikipedia’s servers are struggling to keep up. Generative AI summaries are also using Wikipedia’s data in web searches but not crediting sources, siphoning web traffic away while borrowing the platform’s work.

For free services like this, no-one stops to ask how it’s being paid for – and now Wikipedia is having to make the tough decision of where to allocate their limited resources to deal with this. It’s vital as a community we take steps to protect this important platform, and we hope to turn our work into a monitoring tool where the community can track how AI is impacting Wikipedia. 

Postdoc and first author of the study Neal Reeves suggests there are steps available to protect Wikipedia. “Ultimately, we need a new social contract between AI companies and providers of high-quality data like Wikipedia where they retain more power over their material, while still allowing for their data to be used for training purposes. Collaboration, like that seen in programmes like MLCommons, is needed to reach across the aisle and ensure that the next generation of AI models are trained well, but in a way that doesn’t destroy one of the free internet’s greatest resources.”

Speaking of destroying great resources, Elon Musk has decided that, as he found with Twitter, Wikipedia is too woke, and has announced his AI rival to it: Grokipedia. The vision: “Grokipedia is going to be the world’s biggest, most accurate knowledge source, for humans and AI with no limits on use.”

The announcement rambles on:

With Grok, Grokipedia aims for maximum truth through first principles and physics. It replaces partially masked evidences of how legacy media operates, rewriting with complete accurate context that cuts through the BS. this will combat the evil organizations and the evil minds that operating under the hood and who’ve poisoned minds for decades with endless fake news and distorted narratives through legacy media and Wikipedia, causing immense harm to young minds and manipulated the world long enough.

I.e., if you liked how Elon “fixed” Twitter, you may like Grokipedia. Of course, if you are not a fan of X, or have found Grok to be underwhelming and, at times, scary, Grokipedia may not be for you.

Credit: DogeDesigner

Elon is not the only one who thinks Wikipedia is too woke. Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger – who left it shortly after its founding – issued his “9 theses” calling for counteracting what he sees as left wing bias. His theses:

1. End decision-making by “consensus.”
2. Enable competing articles.
3. Abolish source blacklists.
4. Revive the original neutrality policy.
5. Repeal “Ignore all rules.”
6. Reveal who Wikipedia’s leaders are.
7. Let the public rate articles.
8. End indefinite blocking.
9. Adopt a legislative process.

Mr. Sanger believes Wikipedia doesn’t allow certain right wing websites (think Fox News) as sources, and says: “What I can tell you is that over the years, conservatives, libertarians, were just pushed out. There is a whole…army of administrators, hundreds of them, who are constantly blocking people…that they have ideological disagreements with.”

Tucker Carlson had Mr. Sanger on his podcast last week, and pronounced: “Wikipedia shapes America. And because of its importance, it’s an emergency, in my opinion, that Wikipedia is completely dishonest and completely controlled on questions that matter.”

Tucker Carlson and Larry Sanger. Credit: Tucker Carlson Podcast

Ted Cruz wasted no time joining the bandwagon, expressing his concerns in a letter to Wikimedia Foundation CEO Maryana Iskander. “Wikipedia began with a noble concept: crowdsource human knowledge using verifiable sources and make it free to the public. That’s what makes reports of Wikipedia’s systemic bias especially troubling,” Senator Cruz wrote. He also charged that the Wikipedia Foundation “financially supports left-wing organizations that contribute to Wikipedia content.”

Adding to the pile-on, White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks has suggested Wikipedia is “hopelessly biased,” alleging that an “army of left-wing activists maintain the bios and fight reasonable corrections.” Politico reported that Ed Martin, then D.C.’s interim U.S. attorney appointed by Trump, and the House Oversight Committee have also gone after Wikipedia for similar reasons

If you are someone who thought that the Biden Administration, the mainstream media, and social media platforms were right to try to get credible information out during the height of the COVID pandemic, this will all sound frighteningly familiar to you. If you are someone who thinks every point of view should be heard equally and that RFK Jr. makes a lot of sense, then you have your new target.  

Honestly, if Wikipedia is going to go down, I’d rather it be from a top notch AI than for it to be smeared as “Wokepedia” and drowned in disinformation. But I’m not sure I’ll have that choice.