Experts weigh in on COVID-19 concerns about food pickup and delivery

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.

Time for ranked ballots?

Re: Get out and exercise your franchise (Editorial, Oct. 24)

Declining turnout is indeed a threat to our democracy and, while I am grateful that the editorial mentioned proportional representation, the issue on the municipal level can be solved far more simply — using ranked-choice voting.

In the last Winnipeg municipal election, the mayor “won” the election with only 27 per cent of the vote. Multiply that by the turnout of 37.5 per cent and the mayor’s positive mandate — the portion of the electorate that voted for him as mayor — drops to a paltry 10 per cent. That number should shock us into an awareness that the single-mark ballot has failed us miserably.

Perhaps it's crossed your mind when you picked up a food order, grabbed a beverage at the drive-thru or ordered a pizza: how significant is the risk of COVID-19 when handling pickup and delivery items?

While the chances of transmission via food courier are quite low, experts say taking a number of precautionary steps can help minimize risk and put the mind at ease.

With home delivery for example, proper distancing with the driver is highly recommended.

"You always ask them just to leave it at the door," said University of Guelph food science professor Keith Warriner. "You've got more chance of being infected by a person rather than a parcel."