Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. As a classically trained singer preparing for a professional career, Erin Perry can see quite clearly how artificial intelligence is upending her field--all the way down to the classroom. Perry just completed her first year as a graduate student in voice performance at the Peabody Institute, the prestigious music conservatory run by Johns Hopkins University. It's been rewarding so far: She's been learning how to navigate the modern classical music sector and confronting the relevant impacts of generative A.I., having taken on a project to study the major record labels' lawsuit against the Amazon-backed A.I. startup Anthropic, which trained its models on songwriters' lyrics sans permission or compensation. Understandably, Perry's rather skeptical of A.I.'s artistic applications, and fearful of the sweeping effects it could have on her chosen field, especially as generative-music startups like Suno and Udio are programmed to replicate specific artists and musical styles.

The White House revealed it is looking into reports the Israeli army has been using an AI system to populate its'kill list' of alleged Hamas terrorists, hours after President Joe Biden's call with Benjamin Netanyahu. The report cited six Israeli intelligence officers, who admitted to using an AI called'Lavender' to classify as many as 37,000 Palestinians as suspected militants -- marking these people and their homes as acceptable targets for air strikes. White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told CNN on Thursday that the reports had not been verified, but they were investigating. Israel has vehemently denied the AI's role with an army spokesperson describing the system as'auxiliary tools that assist officers in the process of incrimination.' However, during the call Biden reportedly threatened that he would condition the US' support for the attack in Gaza if the Israeli government didn't protect civilians and aid workers from offensive assaults.

The Israeli army has been using an AI system to populate its'kill list' of alleged Hamas terrorists, leading to the deaths of women and children, a new report claims. The report cited six Israeli intelligence officers, who admitted to using an AI called'Lavender' to classify as many as 37,000 Palestinians as suspected militants -- marking these people and their homes as acceptable targets for air strikes. Israel has vehemently denied the AI's role with an army spokesperson describing the system as'auxiliary tools that assist officers in the process of incrimination.' Lavender was trained on data from Israeli intelligence's decades-long surveillance of Palestinian populations, using the digital footprints of known militants as a model for what signal to look for in the noise, according to the report. The intel sources noted that human officers scanned each AI-chosen target for about '20 seconds' before giving their'stamp' of approval, despite an internal study that had determined Lavender AI misidentified people 10 percent of the time. Israel quietly delegated the identification of Hamas terrorists, Palestinian civilians and aide workers to an artificial intelligence, 'Lavender,' a new report revealed.

This summer, a pill intended to treat a chronic, incurable lung disease entered mid-phase human trials. Previous studies have demonstrated that the drug is safe to swallow, although whether it will improve symptoms of the painful fibrosis that it targets remains unknown; this is what the current trial will determine, perhaps by next year. Such a tentative advance would hardly be newsworthy, except for a wrinkle in the medicine's genesis: It is likely the first drug fully designed by artificial intelligence to come this far in the development pipeline. The pill's maker, the biotech company Insilico Medicine, used hundreds of AI models to discover both a new target in the body that could treat the fibrosis and which molecules might be synthesized for the drug itself. Those programs allowed Insilico to go from scratch to putting this drug through the first phase of human trials in two and a half years, rather than the typical five or so.

Artificial intelligence-powered influencers are the new social media trend. But there could be negative effects from the perfect influencers, a humane technologist warns. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255). Jury selection begins Thursday for the alleged medical abuse case that broke a Florida family apart and inspired the Netflix documentary "Take Care of Maya." In 2016, at just 10 years old, Maya Kowalski -- the girl at the center of the Netflix documentary -- was admitted to Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital (JHAC) in St. Petersburg, Florida, for severe pain and then promptly removed from the custody of her parents after staff accused them of "medical abuse."

Doctors believe artificial intelligence is now saving lives, after a major advancement in breast cancer screenings. AI is detecting early signs of the disease, in some cases years before doctors would find the cancer on a traditional scan. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255). A new documentary highlights the story of a 10-year-old girl who was admitted to a Florida children's hospital for severe pain and then promptly removed from the custody of her parents after staff accused them of "medical abuse." Netflix's "Take Care of Maya" follows the story of Maya Kowalski and her mother, Beata Kowalski, a registered nurse, as they navigate Maya's rare, chronic neurological condition called complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) – a poorly understood affliction that causes severe pain throughout a person's body due to nervous system dysfunction, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

As artificial intelligence software and advanced computers revolutionize modern technology, some researchers see a future where computer programmers leap from silicon to organic molecules. Scientists with Johns Hopkins University are investigating the possibility of "biocomputers" – programs modelled from organic molecules such as human DNA or proteins – unlocking new insights on human biology and advancing the processing power of future tech. Much of these technological anticipations derive from something called "organoids," which are lab-grown tissues resembling fully grown organs, sharing similar biological complexities to tissues comprised in kidneys, lungs and brain cells. Organoids, which have become more prominent in labs over the last two decades, currently offer scientists a more ethical alternative to animal or human testing, mimicking basic functions of cells and advancing scientific understandings towards how those cells operate. Most recently, scientists with Johns Hopkins have been assessing the nature of "brain organoids," which are orbs the size of a pen dot that mirror the basic neural functions of learning and remembering in the human brain, according to a news release.

Medical devices and robots have been making their way into operating rooms in an increasing number of procedures. Now a new robot is trying to forge its path in the OR and assist surgeons who don't yet have that advantage. "There are surgeons out there that have really no robotic assistance at all," said Bruce Lichorowic, CEO of Galen Robotics. "So you have surgeons out there that are doing everything still by hand, using their training to keep their tremor under control to keep themselves stable. Our goal is to see if we can assist them in these areas where there's really no help today."

Ten years ago, 12-year-old Rory Staunton dove for a ball in gym class and scraped his arm. He woke up the next day with a 104 F fever, so his parents took him to the pediatrician and eventually the emergency room. It was just the stomach flu, they were told. Three days later, Rory died of sepsis after bacteria from the scrape infiltrated his blood and triggered organ failure. "How does that happen in a modern society?" his father, Ciaran Staunton, said in a recent interview with Undark. Each year in the United States, sepsis kills over a quarter million people -- more than stroke, diabetes, or lung cancer.

Ten years ago, 12-year-old Rory Staunton dove for a ball in gym class and scraped his arm. He woke up the next day with a 104 F fever, so his parents took him to the pediatrician and eventually the emergency room. It was just the stomach flu, they were told. Three days later, Rory died of sepsis after bacteria from the scrape infiltrated his blood and triggered organ failure. "How does that happen in a modern society?" his father, Ciaran Staunton, said in a recent interview with Undark.