Keep your cool and enjoy your new look

There is much attention paid to helping those who become homeless, but all too little attention given to preventing homelessness in the first place.

About one quarter of all the people experiencing homelessness are seniors, according to the most recent End Homelessness Winnipeg report. This represents a fundamental failure of our province to prevent homelessness.

Ending homelessness where it has become chronic should not be considered the end point in addressing homelessness. It is like trying to solve the problem of water on your kitchen floor by mopping it up, without considering the importance of turning off the tap so that water does not continue flowing over the edge of the sink.

Preventing homelessness in seniors is achievable. We have many resources and many organizations which support seniors, but they are fragmented, poorly co-ordinated, inadequately, funded in some cases, and have not sufficiently focused their efforts on preventing homelessness in seniors. Too many seniors are falling through the cracks.

In 1986, Paul Simon sang of “days of miracle and wonder” in the song The Boy in the Bubble, from his Graceland album. It was hardly a hymn to progress. Scientific ingenuity coexisted with violence and vulnerability. The world was becoming more technologically capable but not necessarily wiser.

Four decades later, I find the sentiment difficult to improve upon. Since ChatGPT’s release in November 2022, predictions about AI have arrived in rapid succession. Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Elon Musk and others in the tech industry’s so-called “broligarchy” have fuelled recent headlines about approaching “superintelligence” and futures ranging from human flourishing to catastrophe. The advances are real but the predictions often carry more confidence than evidence. The future, it seems, is permanently scheduled for an upgrade.

Yet a more immediate question risks being lost — as AI systems become more capable and we delegate increasingly complex work to them, will our capacity to understand, question and oversee their outputs keep pace?

That question begins with understanding what we are delegating. AI is not a single technology. Specialized systems have helped scientists predict protein structures. ChatGPT relies on general-purpose language models trained on vast datasets. The most advanced systems are often called “frontier models”. They can write, translate, analyze and converse across subjects, but fluency does not guarantee accuracy. Success at one task does not establish competence at another.

Indigenous leaders and bioscience professionals are gathering this week to promote health-care technology in northern communities.

Bioscience Association Manitoba is hosting its second annual Indigenous Health Innovations conference on Thursday, a day after the World Indigenous Business Forum ends its Winnipeg tenure.

“We fly a lot of people in the North to get access for care for things that technology can actually give them,” said Andrea Ladouceur, Bioscience Association Manitoba’s president.

For example, Manitobans may hop on a plane for a strep throat test when they don’t need to, she said.

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: My husband died a while back, and I don’t miss him! He had grown old in a strange and cranky way, and I’m a cheerful person by nature. It was hard to hear him shoot down every idea I had to go out and do things together.

He wasn’t physically ill — just finished with having any fun. He had gotten depressed and wouldn’t take anti-depressants, although he was fine with getting drunk and critical towards me.

He was particularly negative about seeing friends and relatives, and living the active way we used to — always the first to get tickets to concerts and encouraging other friends to go with us for dinners at new restaurants. We also went to a lot of sports games, and visited friends and relatives. We arrive with lots of good food and drink.

So now when people ask me in that pitying voice used for widows, “Poor darling, how are you doing?” I respond, “He was miserable towards the end, and it was a relief when he died.” They look shocked, but it’s the truth, and they know it.