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Yomiuri Shimbun
an hour ago
- Health
- Yomiuri Shimbun
White House MAHA Report May Have Garbled Science by Using AI, Experts Say
Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a Make America Healthy Again Commission event at the White House on May 22. Some of the citations that underpin the science in the White House's sweeping 'MAHA Report' appear to have been generated using artificial intelligence, resulting in numerous garbled scientific references and invented studies, AI experts said Thursday. Of the 522 footnotes to scientific research in an initial version of the report sent to The Washington Post, at least 37 appear multiple times, according to a review of the report by The Post. Other citations include the wrong author, and several studies cited by the extensive health report do not exist at all, a fact first reported by the online news outlet NOTUS on Thursday morning. Some references include 'oaicite' attached to URLs – a definitive sign that the research was collected using artificial intelligence. The presence of 'oaicite' is a marker indicating use of OpenAI, a U.S. artificial intelligence company. A common hallmark of AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, is unusually repetitive content that does not sound human or is inaccurate -as well as the tendency to 'hallucinate' studies or answers that appear to make sense but are not real. AI technology can be used legitimately to quickly survey the research in a field. But Oren Etzioni, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington who studies AI, said he was shocked by the sloppiness in the MAHA Report. 'Frankly, that's shoddy work,' he said. 'We deserve better.' 'The MAHA Report: Making Our Children Healthy Again,' which addressed the root causes of America's lagging health outcomes, was written by a commission of Cabinet officials and government scientific leaders. It was led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a history of misstating science, and written in response to an executive order from President Donald Trump. It blames exposure to environmental toxins, poor nutrition and increased screen time for a decline in Americans' life expectancy. Outcry was swift following The Post's report. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) said the administration's potential use of AI to influence policy was dangerous. 'These people are unserious – but they pose a serious risk to Americans' health,' he wrote in a social media post. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) said in a statement, 'It's shameful that American parents even have to think about fake science and AI-generated studies in official White House reports on their kids' health.' The entire episode is a 'cautionary tale' for the potential use of AI in government, said Anand Parekh, chief medical adviser at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C., think tank. 'Did they not have enough staff?' he asked Friday. 'What are the checks?' One reference in the initial version of the report cited a study titled 'Overprescribing of Oral Corticosteroids for Children With Asthma' to buttress the idea that children are overmedicated. But that study didn't appear to exist. There is a similar Pediatrics article from 2017 with the same first author but different co-authors. Later Thursday, that Pediatrics article was swapped in for the apparently nonexistent study in the version of the report available online. An article credited to U.S. News & World Report about children's recess and exercise time was initially cited twice to support claims of declining physical activity among U.S. children, once with only part of the link shown. It listed Mlynek, A. and Spiegel, S. as different authors. Neither referred to Kate Rix, who wrote the story. Neither Mlynek nor Spiegel appear to be actual reporters for the publication. As of Thursday evening, Rix had been swapped in as the author on one of the references in the version of the report available online. Nearly half of the 522 citations in the initial version of the report included links to articles or studies. But a Post analysis of all the report's references found that at least 21 of those links were dead. Former governor and current New York City mayoral front-runner Andrew M. Cuomo was caught up in controversy last month after a housing policy report he issued used ChatGPT and garbled a reference. Attorneys have faced sanctions for using nonexistent case citations created by ChatGPT in legal briefs. The garbled scientific citations betray subpar science and undermine the credibility of the report, said Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. 'This is not an evidence-based report, and for all practical purposes, it should be junked at this point,' he said. 'It cannot be used for any policymaking. It cannot even be used for any serious discussion, because you can't believe what's in it.' When asked about the nonexistent citations at a news briefing Thursday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the White House has 'complete confidence in Secretary Kennedy and his team at HHS.' 'I understand there were some formatting issues with the MAHA Report that are being addressed, and the report will be updated, but it does not negate the substance of the report, which, as you know, is one of the most transformative health reports that has ever been released by the federal government, and is backed on good science that has never been recognized by the federal government,' Leavitt said. At some point between 1 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. Thursday, the MAHA Report file was updated on the White House site to remove mentions of 'corrected hyperlinks' and one of the 'oaicite' markers. Another 'oaicite' marker, attached to a New York Times Wirecutter story about baby formula, was still present in the document until it was removed Thursday evening. The White House continued to update the report into the night. Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon said that 'minor citation and formatting errors have been corrected, but the substance of the MAHA report remains the same – a historic and transformative assessment by the federal government to understand the chronic disease epidemic afflicting our nation's children.' 'Under President Trump and Secretary Kennedy, our federal government is no longer ignoring this crisis, and it's time for the media to also focus on what matters,' Nixon said. Kennedy has long vowed to use AI to make America's health care better and more efficient, recently stating in a congressional hearing that he had even seen an AI nurse prototype 'that could revolutionize health delivery in rural areas.' Peter Lurie, president of the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, said he was not surprised by the presence of possible AI markers in the report. Lurie said he had asked his own staff to look into it after noticing that the report linked to one of his organization's fact sheets but credited the Department of Agriculture and HHS as the authors. 'The idea that they would envelop themselves in the shroud of scientific excellence while producing a report that relies heavily on AI is just shockingly hypocritical,' said Lurie, who was a top Food and Drug Administration official in the Obama administration, where he wrote such government reports. There are many pitfalls in modern AI, which is 'happy to make up citations,' said Steven Piantadosi, a professor in psychology and neuroscience at the University of California at Berkeley. 'The problem with current AI is that it's not trustworthy, so it's just based on statistical associations and dependencies,' he said. 'It has no notion of ground truth, no notion of … a rigorous logical or statistical argument. It has no notions of evidence and how strongly to weigh one kind of evidence versus another. ' The Post previously reported that the document stretched the boundaries of science with some of its conclusions. Several sections offer misleading representations of findings in scientific papers.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Has Big Brother arrived? Inside the secretive Trump effort to centralize government data on millions of Americans
The Trump administration is reportedly leaning on an Elon Musk-allied tech company to build wide-ranging data tools pooling government information on millions of Americans and immigrants alike. The campaign has raised alarms from critics that the company could be furthering Musk's DOGE effort to vacuum up and potentially weaponize – or sell – mass amounts of sensitive personal data, particularly against vulnerable groups like immigrants and political dissidents. In March, the president signed an executive order dedicated to 'stopping waste, fraud, and abuse by eliminating information silos,' a euphemism for pooling vast stores of data on Americans under the federal government. To carry out the data effort, the administration has deepened the federal government's longstanding partnership with Palantir, a tech firm specializing in building big data applications, which was co-founded by Silicon Valley investor, GOP donor, and JD Vance mentor Peter Thiel. Since Trump took office, the administration has reportedly spent more than $113 million with Palantir through new and existing contracts, while the company is slated to begin work on a new $795 million deal with the Defense Department. Palantir is reportedly working with the administration in the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Internal Revenue Service, according to The New York Times. Within these agencies, the firm is reportedly building tools to track the movement of migrants in real time and streamline all tax data. The company is also reportedly in talks about deploying its technology at the Social Security Administration and the Department of Education, both of which have been targets of DOGE, and which store sensitive information about Americans' identities and finances. 'We act as a data processor, not a data controller,' the company insisted in response to the Times report. 'Our software and services are used under direction from the organizations that license our products. These organizations define what can and cannot be done with their data; they control the Palantir accounts in which analysis is conducted.' The Trump administration has reportedly pursued a variety of efforts to use big data to support its priorities, including social media surveillance of immigrants to detect alleged pro-terror views, and American activists who disagree wit Donal Trump's views.. Earlier this month, a group of former Palantir employees warned in an open letter that the company was 'normalizing authoritarianism under the guise of a 'revolution' led by oligarchs.' 'By supporting Trump's administration, Elon Musk's DOGE initiative, and dangerous expansions of executive power, they have abandoned their responsibility and are in violation of Palantir's Code of Conduct,' the employees wrote. Previous reporting from CNN and WIRED has described efforts at the Department of Homeland Security to build mass data tools to support tracking and surveilling undocumented immigrants, a key priority for the White House as deportations still aren't reaching levels necessary to meet Trump's promise of rapidly removing millions of people from the country. The effort has involved merging data from outside agencies like Social Security and the IRS, according to WIRED. 'They are trying to amass a huge amount of data,' a senior DHS official told the magazine. 'It has nothing to do with finding fraud or wasteful spending … They are already cross-referencing immigration with SSA and IRS, as well as voter data.' Since Trump took office, DOGE operatives, many of whom are unknown to the public nor have been vetted, have rapidly sought access to data at key agencies, including the Departments of Education and the Treasury, as well as the Social Security Administration, often over the objections of senior staff. The efforts have prompted scores of lawsuits against DOGE. At Social Security, the administration also moved thousands of living, mostly Latino undocumented immigrants into the agency's 'Death Master File' in an attempt to pressure them to leave the country. DOGE itself is reportedly under audit for its action by the Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog. An April letter from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee warned of DOGE's 'extreme negligence and an alarmingly cavalier attitude' toward sensitive data. It claimed a whistleblower had described how 'DOGE engineers have tried to create specialized computers for themselves that simultaneously give full access to networks and databases across different agencies.' The 'whistleblower information obtained by the Committee, combined with public reporting, paints a picture of chaos at SSA [Social Security Administration] as DOGE is rapidly, haphazardly, and unlawfully working to implement changes that could disrupt Social Security payments and expose Americans' sensitive data,' the letter reads.'
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Business Standard
3 hours ago
- Business
- Business Standard
Elon Musk's legal battles expected to outlast his time in White House
As Elon Musk leaves his formal US government position, dozens of legal challenges over the billionaire's powerful role in the Trump administration and the work of the Department of Government Efficiency will press ahead. Musk announced his departure earlier this week. At a White House press conference with President Donald Trump Friday, Musk said he'd continue to be a 'friend and an adviser.' He didn't elaborate on what that would entail. At least three lawsuits are pending that accuse Trump of unconstitutionally handing the Tesla Inc. and SpaceX chief executive officer the equivalent of a cabinet-level post over the past four months. Despite his exit, the challengers behind those cases are vowing to continue those fights. 'The case is absolutely relevant,' said Anjana Samant, a senior lawyer in the New Mexico Department of Justice, which is leading a group of states in one of the challenges. The Democratic state attorneys want a judge to invalidate actions they contend Musk unlawfully took to upend federal government operations and to declare that the DOGE project has gone far beyond what US law allows. The larger collection of lawsuits challenging Musk and DOGE activities to date are certain to continue. They include fights over DOGE access to Americans' personal information, whether the office is subject to public records laws and its role in canceling federal grants and contracts, dismantling agencies and firing workers. White House spokesperson Harrison Fields declined to comment on the administration's next steps in court but said government lawyers 'will continue to fight every single frivolous lawsuit that is brought our way.' A Justice Department spokesperson and Musk did not respond to requests for comment. The Justice Department has represented Musk and DOGE in court and would be expected to continue defending against allegations related to government work. Musk recently had criticized Trump's tax cut proposal but he and Trump praised each other during Friday's press event in the Oval Office. He also slammed the wave of court rulings against the administration, saying that 'immense judicial overreach' is 'undermining the people's faith in the legal system.' Some legal experts say Musk's formal exit could give the Justice Department grounds to argue for dismissal. Jeff Powell, a constitutional law professor at Duke University School of Law, said claims over the legality of Musk's position under the Constitution's Appointments Clause would no longer be valid once he's left government service. Powell called the claims 'meritless' to the extent the challengers want to hold Musk or DOGE responsible for communicating Trump's 'will' to Senate-confirmed officials who carried out the actions. 'Musk was a minion,' Powell said. 'The lawsuits may have other things, they may challenge the substantive validity of the reduction of force or cancellation of contracts, but that had nothing to do with Musk.' Norm Eisen, executive chair of Democracy Defenders Action and a lead attorney in another case challenging Musk's appointment, cited the billionaire's comments that he would stay involved with the administration for the rest of Trump's term as a reason why it was 'very important' that he remain a party in court. 'Principal Officer' Courts can dismiss cases if circumstances change. When Trump lost the 2020 election and left office in January 2021, the Supreme Court dismissed long-running fights over whether Trump's business interests violated anti-corruption provisions of the Constitution. Musk joined the administration as a 'special government employee,' a temporary status set to expire this month. Legal challenges citing the Appointments Clause allege that Musk was functioning as a 'principal officer' similar to Senate-confirmed agency heads who only answer to the president. Each of the lawsuits include other claims and defendants. A Washington federal judge this week denied the government's request to dismiss the states' case over Musk's appointment. US District Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote that there might be a viable Appointments Clause claim against whomever Trump put in charge of the DOGE effort, given the allegations that the position had evolved to influence multiple agencies. Brent Ferguson of the Campaign Legal Center, which brought a third constitutional challenge to Musk's authority in the administration that's also before Chutkan, said they were 'full steam ahead.' He said they wouldn't take Musk and White House officials at their word that he's no longer part of DOGE's work and demand evidence that proves his status. 'Regardless of the title that he's given by the government or what they say his role is, the real question for the Appointments Clause is, what actual power does he have,' Ferguson said. Dozens more lawsuits have been filed that relate to DOGE's activities. Judges have handed down a mix of rulings, in some cases greenlighting DOGE-affiliated staff's access to agency records and allowing cuts to federal spending and the workforce. In other cases, they've restricted DOGE from seeing Americans' information, revived spending and put fired federal personnel back on the job. Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, a group involved in a number of lawsuits against the administration, said in a statement that they would continue to challenge the legality of what Musk accomplished. 'While he may have left Washington, the havoc he has created has not,' she said.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
U.S., Canada to renew rivalry in World Para Hockey Championship final
The U.S. and Canada will meet in the World Para Hockey Championship final for an eighth consecutive time, with the U.S. aiming to complete an unprecedented sweep. The gold-medal game in Buffalo is Saturday at 4 p.m. ET, live on Peacock. Advertisement The U.S. can become the first nation to win the IIHF World Women's Hockey title, the IIHF World Men's Hockey title and the World Para Hockey title in the same year. The U.S. beat China 6-1 in Friday's semifinals on goals from Declan Farmer (two), Jack Wallace (two), Evan Nichols and Josh Pauls. Earlier Friday, Canada topped Czechia 3-0 in the semis. Canada has outscored its four opponents 30-2. The U.S. has outscored its four opponents 35-4. Last year, Canada beat the U.S. 2-1 in the world championship final, snapping the Americans' streak of world titles at three and overall winning streak at 41 games dating to October 2021. Canada had lost more than 20 games in a row to the Americans before last year's gold-medal game. Canada beat the U.S. again in their most recent meeting before these worlds.
NBC Sports
5 hours ago
- Sport
- NBC Sports
U.S., Canada to renew rivalry in World Para Hockey Championship final
The U.S. and Canada will meet in the World Para Hockey Championship final for an eighth consecutive time, with the U.S. aiming to complete an unprecedented sweep. The gold-medal game in Buffalo is Saturday at 4 p.m. ET, live on Peacock. The U.S. can become the first nation to win the IIHF World Women's Hockey title, the IIHF World Men's Hockey title and the World Para Hockey title in the same year. The U.S. beat China 6-1 in Friday's semifinals on goals from Declan Farmer (two), Jack Wallace (two), Evan Nichols and Josh Pauls. Earlier Friday, Canada topped Czechia 3-0 in the semis. Canada has outscored its four opponents 30-2. The U.S. has outscored its four opponents 35-4. Last year, Canada beat the U.S. 2-1 in the world championship final, snapping the Americans' streak of world titles at three and overall winning streak at 41 games dating to October 2021. Canada had lost more than 20 games in a row to the Americans before last year's gold-medal game. Canada beat the U.S. again in their most recent meeting before these worlds.
