“He’s a household gnome. What could possibly go wrong?” That’s a quote from the latest Wallace & Gromit film – a cheeky series that pokes fun at humans and applauds the genius of dogs. The newest installment is called Vengeance Most Fowl, a stop-motion animated comedy (pause here to acknowledge that “stop-motion” makes NO sense.) This weird little animated film reflects our reality – the plot revolves around Wallace inventing an AI-supported garden gnome named Norbot that can efficiently handle yard work. We, too, are living in a time when machines are about to take over our daily tasks. I just hope we can avoid the film’s plot about how Norbot falls into the hands of a villainous penguin who reprograms the “smart gnome” to be evil. It could happen. We explain why in the One Thoughtful Paragraph below.
Other news about well-intentioned activity that could be evil plots by villainous penguins:
- Transcarent announced plans to acquire Accolade for $621M. Together, the self-insured employer platform and benefits navigator would form a large digital health benefits platform serving more than 1,400 employer and payer clients. More here, here.
- CMS published FAQs about its Qualified Health Plan Provider Directory Pilot in Oklahoma. Health plans on the federal ACA Marketplace will participate, allowing providers to input their contact data into one portal. The pilot is expected to go live in spring 2025 and will not be available to consumers.
- Circular and VIV Health both announced new smart rings at CES 2025, that include new features like AFib detection algorithms and sleep-aid sound technology.
“I just don’t get it,” says inventor Wallace. “Why would my own gnome turn evil?” Unfortunately, we all can relate to the smart-but-naïve claymation man in the Wallace & Gromit films (even though he’s British). Things are happening all around us that we don’t really understand but assume it is all going to be ok. So when I saw that Blackstone, the private equity behemoth, is investing $300 million in a California-based AI data intelligence company that I never heard of (it is called DDN), I thought “hmmmm… I hope that’s a good thing.” Notably, DDN cut its teeth on AI intelligence / complex simulations in the drug development space and is used by the Colossus supercomputer being built by Elon Musk’s xAI (he launched xAI’s app “Grok” to compete with Open AI’s ChatGPT). President Musk (he must be the President of something) has said the supercomputer is being scaled up to include 200,000 of Nvidia’s advanced AI chips and announced at CES this week that he’s concerned we don’t have enough training data. Seems like DDN is poised, now, to help with that. We wonder what that will mean for healthcare AI models. As the Brits that made the Wallace & Gromit movie said about their use of the latest filmmaking tech: “We used all the toys in the toy box.”
