Dear Patient,

In our continual efforts to provide you with the confusing level of treatment you’ve come to expect, we’d like to introduce you to HellthChase, our new cumbersome and contactless check-in solution.

HellthChase invites and obligates you to engage in the unpaid data entry of your health information. Once you’re set up, you can complete a variety of other activities online without having to interact with a human regarding important medical care.

What kinds of activities can I complete on HellthChase?
You can attempt such tedious tasks as:

• Ask questions or request prescription refills from doctors and staff who might read and respond within one day or never
• Regularly scan and upload your insurance card and driver’s license because we’re not sure we believe you that you are who you say you are
• Sign forms with a pre-selected online signature in the font of an eight-year-old child’s writing
• Be gaslit into thinking you can schedule appointments online easily
• Examine some HIPAA forms you signed but never read and don’t give a shit about
• Opt in by default to receive texts about balances due, with no billing or insurance detail

Are my records secure?
Yes. All personal data entered online is completely hacker-proof. Did you know that prior to web-based recordkeeping, paper records were constantly being snagged from doctors’ offices by cat burglars?

Is that true?
No, but it’s a narrative that HellthChase says inspires instant cooperation from technophobic patients.

Given that I can complete forms at home before my appointment, will HellthChase save me time?
Oh, god, no. HellthChase convinced us to purchase off-brand digital tablets that our receptionists will hand you at check-in. The tablets love to freeze and time out, which allows you to mindfully watch a digital hourglass (HellthChase likes to say they put the “patient” in “Patient Portal”). Once our Wi-Fi has caught up and the screen refreshes or starts over at the beginning, you will get a chance to confirm or re-enter any information you previously completed before your appointment.

Wait, if I have to hold a tablet… didn’t you say it was contactless?
Well, you don’t have to touch the receptionist’s hand; you just have to take the tablet. Technically, you aren’t making contact with a human, which is our ultimate goal. However, holding a tablet that was held moments earlier by another ill person allows you exposure to healthy germs that will keep your immune system robust.

Will this system connect with patient portal systems my other doctors use so I can have one login?
No. As an American with healthcare, you must have unique passwords for at least twenty bespoke portals, none of which connect with one another.

Did my previous online health records migrate over?
Ha ha ha, what? No. Those were lost in a cloud fire. You can declare yourself at the beginning of a fresh start of your health, or if you were a really anxious nerd and you printed your previous records, you can try entering them on your own (but remember the character limit). Or you may give them to your provider, who will just throw them in the trash.

Two days ago, I requested a prescription refill, but I have not heard back. Should I request a refill via my pharmacy?
No. This double-dipping will create confusion and delay. Just be patient. Doctors may take twenty-four to forty-eight hours to respond, but sometimes take 1,204 hours due to regular software updates to the portal.

I received a scary test result via the portal. Can I please speak with a doctor to confirm I’m not dying?
What are you doing trying to interpret your own test results? Those are not meant for your eyes. Wait for your doctor to message you that everything is fine.

Isn’t the point of the portal to access my information?
The point of the portal is that it’s cool and proves we aren’t afraid to stay on the cutting edge of technology, even when it’s not helpful yet. There are definitely notes our doctors make and see, and you will never know about anything you don’t have access to. You really shouldn’t be looking at anything. Except the HIPAA forms.

I’d prefer not to be texted balances due. Can you mail me a bill instead?
No. One hundred percent of ill Americans, you included, are criminals who plan to never pay their medical balances, so for efficiency, we omit sending detailed paper bills. Instead, the portal bombards you with a series of texts with balance reminders, which is not unlike the harassment of debt collectors. Just trust that the amount we say you owe is correct. Pay immediately, or you will be texted repeated threats and insults, you lazy sack of disease-riddled bones.

Can I opt out of this bullshit?
No, you are obligated to take charge of your well-being with HellthChase. Sign in today to take an active role in getting actively frustrated by your healthcare. Your username is your social security number, and your default password is SucKeR.

The problem that you face is that it's relatively easy to take a model and make it look like it's aligned. You ask GPT-4, “how do I end all of humans?” And the model says, “I can't possibly help you with that”. But there are a million and one ways to take the exact same question - pick your favorite - and you can make the model still answer the question even though initially it would have refused. And the question this reminds me a lot of coming from adversarial machine learning. We have a very simple objective: Classify the image correctly according to the original label. And yet, despite the fact that it was essentially trivial to find all of the bugs in principle, the community had a very hard time coming up with actually effective defenses. We wrote like over 9,000 papers in ten years, and have made very very very limited progress on this one small problem. You all have a harder problem and maybe less time.

— Nicholas Carlini

Tags: machine-learning, ai, jailbreak, security

Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don’t anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn - you stick your hand in there and it’ll chop it off, the end. You don’t think "oh, the lawnmower hates me" – lawnmower doesn’t give a shit about you, lawnmower can’t hate you. Don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don’t fall into that trap about Oracle.

— Bryan Cantrill

Tags: oracle, bryan-cantrill

NSW has pushed ahead with a wholesale expansion of its internally developed generative artificial intelligence tools for teachers.

The post NSW Education rolls bespoke AI to help teachers, eliminate admin staff appeared first on The Mandarin.

o1 prompting is alien to me. Its thinking, gloriously effective at times, is also dreamlike and unamenable to advice.

Just say what you want and pray. Any notes on “how” will be followed with the diligence of a brilliant intern on ketamine.

— Riley Goodside

Tags: riley-goodside, o1, prompt-engineering, generative-ai, openai, ai, llms