“My problem is, I wanted to win my first case without any help from anybody.” That’s what Joe Pesci (playing a litigator) says to the totally hilarious Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny. Naturally, as his smart and sassy fiancée, Marisa Tomei makes fun of him for this dumb goal because getting help is good, not something to be embarrassed about. Apparently, the National Science Foundation watched the movie recently because they are now asking for help on creating the AI Action Plan that President Trump asked them to put together. So, we all have a few weeks to be super helpful. More about that in the One Thoughtful Paragraph.
For now, there are a few news items that make you want to go get help:
- Elon Musk is accessing health payment systems and other sensitive data as part of a sweep of federal agencies targeting fraud and waste. Read more here, here, here.
- The FDA issued a warning that patients who track their glucose levels through devices that connect to their smartphones (e.g., continuous glucose monitors) may miss key notifications due to potential hardware and software issues.
- Actually, this is an example of industry leaders helping: The Consumer Technology Association and AdvaMed posted a report from a listening session with patient advocacy groups, facilitated by Maverick Health Policy, about health AI tools.
“I’m in the dark here with all this legal crap; I have no idea what’s going on. All I know is you’re screwing up and I can’t help.” No, this is not what Elon Musk is saying – obviously, he thinks he CAN help. Instead, this is how Marisa Tomei complains about feeling helpless to Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny. That’s how the Networking and IT National Coordination Office of the National Science Foundation must have felt recently. As good networkers and national coordinators, they reached out to everyone this week on behalf of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to get ideas for an Artificial Intelligence Action Plan. The Plan, as directed by President Trump’s January 23rd Executive Order, will define the priority policy actions needed to sustain and enhance America’s AI leadership. Your ideas for The Plan can be about almost anything – hardware and chips, data centers, energy consumption, model development, risks, regulation and governance, technical and safety standards, national security and defense, education and workforce, or intellectual property. But: the Request for Information never mentions healthcare. Does that mean health industry experts are on their own if they want to use health AI tools? We’re still encouraging our healthcare friends to offer comments on how they think The Plan should impact them – but whether the White House is interested in offering help or not is yet to be seen. As Marisa Tomei says in My Cousin Vinny, it would be such “a [expletive] nightmare” to have to thank people after they help you. Luckily, the healthcare industry might just be off the hook if our comments are not considered. Asking for help is hard, but maybe Tomei is right – thanking people for help can sometimes be harder.
Speaking of getting good help, we got some: Perri Cooper joined Maverick Health Policy. Unlike Joe Pesci, we are very thankful.
