Trials of vision-improving substances are showing good results, though so far only two have been authorized for use in the United States. The Stats don't lie: after age 65, most people will struggle to focus visually on close-up objects. You might have seen this among your friends and relatives or even experienced it yourself, holding books, magazines, or your phone farther away from your face to try to bring words and pictures into focus. Many of those affected start using reading glasses. But a new treatment could become available: eye drops.

As large language models (LLMs) gain traction in healthcare, concerns about their susceptibility to demographic biases are growing. We introduce {DiversityMedQA}, a novel benchmark designed to assess LLM responses to medical queries across diverse patient demographics, such as gender and ethnicity. By perturbing questions from the MedQA dataset, which comprises medical board exam questions, we created a benchmark that captures the nuanced differences in medical diagnosis across varying patient profiles. Our findings reveal notable discrepancies in model performance when tested against these demographic variations. Furthermore, to ensure the perturbations were accurate, we also propose a filtering strategy that validates each perturbation. By releasing DiversityMedQA, we provide a resource for evaluating and mitigating demographic bias in LLM medical diagnoses.

For rewards and podcast extras, become a patron! Visionary art legend, Android Jones returns for another massive mind meld. This week, we muse about the emerging phenomenon of AI art and what it means for artists and human creativity in general. We also riff on the role of psychedelics in Android's creative process, trying to capture transcendent truth in works of art, and more. Follow and review on Spotify Give us a psychic smooch by leaving us a 5 star review on apple pods!

It's a far cry from robots trying to take over the world in the 2004 Will Smith film I, Robot. But now scientists claim actual eye robots could one day be used to deliver drugs in human eyes to prevent blindness. Fascinating footage shows miniscule machines driving through the eye and carrying medication directly where it needs to go. The devices, called micropropellors, are 200 times smaller than the width of a human hair and use spiral tails to spin through the eye's jelly. Experts, who have only tested the microrobots on dead pigs' eyes, say they could be more effective and faster than using eye drops or injections.