This recent paper (https://doi.org/10.3390/app14167192) looked at whether people’s decision making in identifying real or fake (artificially generated) images improved when given suggestions from an AI. An accurate and less inaccurate version of AI were tested in the experiment. The paper found that if the AI’s skill level was better than the human participant’s, the participant’s performance improved similarly to how talking over a situation with a more experienced or more skilled colleague would help make a better decision.

This is perhaps unsurprising, but it does mean that people in this experiment were able to sense the AI’s skill level in relation to their own to some extent, and not go along when they knew better. In tasks related to risk or safety hazard identification, if this effect holds up, it could mean that AI helpers could enhance performance and make it less likely that potential risks or hazards would not be identified. Like many of these studies, the sample size was small (N=30), so further investigation is recommended.

This NPR story (https://www.kcur.org/news/2024-10-14/volunteer-fire-departments-worry-about-proposed-safety-rules) highlights a particular issue that often arises in regulatory scenarios: costs of a new regulation can be disproportionately high for small organizations like volunteer fire departments or small companies. When we are talking about small companies within a larger industry, we either exempt small businesses from the regulation, or we decide to live with the consequences of putting some companies out of business because the overall benefits of the regulation are very large in comparison to the costs to the industry as a whole.

OSHA found that this rule had $2.6 billion in annual benefits (54 fewer fatalities per year and numerous fewer cases of cancer and injuries) and $545 million in annual costs, which means that somewhere in the United States as a whole there is enough benefit to cover the cost, but those benefits may not be in the hands of these volunteer fire departments. If that is the case, and these values hold up to scrutiny and justify the new rule, governments should find a way to offset these costs, so that they can comply and reap the benefits along with the better funded professional fire departments.

Finally, a pet peeve… The proposed regulation together with its justification including all of the safety, health, and economic analysis ran to 608 pages with the required formatting of the federal register (the length mentioned in the article as a critique of its complexity), this is not the text of the rule itself, which is much shorter and concise. You can see this justification document for yourself here (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/02/05/2023-28203/emergency-response-standard?utm_campaign=subscription+mailing+list&utm_medium=email&utm_source=federalregister.gov).

I was curious to read this recent preprint on arXiv (https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2410.02820) that describes the results of an experimental investigation into whether the GPT-4o model is risk averse and biased in a similar way to human subjects. The authors write that “GPT-4o consistently navigates conjunction fallacy and certain aspects of probability neglect with statistically robust responses. However, the model frequently falls prey to biases such as the resemblance heuristic and framing effects.”

So, the model does better than an untrained human in certain situations and similarly in others. While this experiment is limited to the kinds of language processing that GPT-4o should be able to handle, these models can be employed to give advice, and being aware of and developing methods to mitigate bias in these models will be an important area of research going forward.

If anyone is interested in setting up a GPT-like experiment similar to some of our previous engineering student experiments on risk-related decisions (like https://doi.org/10.1115/IMECE2022-95484 or https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4055156), let me know. I would be interested in running some head-to-head comparisons.

From this paper (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsr.2022.05.005), published in 2022, our analysis found that the California mandate to put solar PV systems on new residential rooftops was likely to modestly increase worker injuries in the state (residential rooftops are one of the most dangerous working environments in the US). The paper does not consider any offsetting health benefits from emissions-free energy production, but it does outline several alternatives to still obtain those benefits and increase solar PV energy production without the worker safety drawbacks (such as installing the solar panels at ground level nearby, rather than on rooftops).

This new paper from Lachenmayer et al. at Colorado State University (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7620/ad82b2) found that environmental concentrations of benzene were between 18% to 89% attributable to an oil and gas well pad located nearby. Concentrations only reached a maximum of 0.8 parts per billion, much less than the 100 ppb recommended 8-hour exposure limit from NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) or the 3 ppb health guideline value (HGV) from the ATSDR (Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry).

Officially, this kind of exposure is ruled safe. However, we do not know much about the effects of combined exposures and benzene and other VOCs can contribute to ground level ozone and other potential secondary pollutants. Further, the nature of population-level exposures are such that if enough people are exposed, even at low levels, we continually increase the likelihood that some group will be negatively impacted. What mitigations have we not yet implemented and what would they cost?

A proposed new regulation for the design of light passenger vehicles to better protect pedestrians (and cyclists and motorcyclists) is open for comment through November 18, 2024. The goal is to make some kinds of impacts between people and vehicles less likely to cause death or serious injury (those at less than 25 mph). Similar rules are already in place in Europe and Asia. Stylistic choices in more recent vehicle designs (like more blunt, vertical, and taller front ends) are partly to blame for the increases in pedestrian fatality rates in the US. The rule is expected to prevent 67 fatalities annually once implemented.

OSHA’s proposed heat exposure standard is currently open for public comment at Regulations.gov, with about 7,300 comments received already. The text and background of the new standard is available in the Federal Register :: Heat Injury and Illness Prevention in Outdoor and Indoor Work Settings. This new standard is anticipated to collectively cost $7.8 billion annually (the high value mostly stemming from how nearly all businesses could be impacted to some degree) and is expected to have $9.2 billion in annual monetized benefits (in reduced heat-related fatalities, $13.77 million per fatality, and non-fatal illnesses, $116,588 per injury).

The sky is full of germs | Popular Science (popsci.com)

They found a lot of different species up there blowing around in the wind, but “We know a lot about how much of an undesired bacteria can be in our food or water before it makes us sick,” Gernand says. In contrast “we very rarely have that kind of information for inhaled pathogens,”

This is a pretty good summary of microwave oven hazards, but omits the biggest point: unlike x-rays that you cannot feel, you will definitely feel microwaves, and it will feel like part of you is on fire.

Is it safe to stand in front of a microwave while it’s on? Here’s what experts say. (yahoo.com)

This is a good example of how “dread” or the fear of an unusual hazard or risk outside of daily experience demands extra attention that we could, but choose not to devote to other hazards.

Why zero tolerance for airline safety lapses doesn’t extend to other industries | Why Americans’ zero tolerance for airline safety lapses doesn’t extend to other industrie (axios.com)

Three things Pennsylvania needs to be ready for hydrogen | Three things Pennsylvania needs to be ready for hydrogen | Opinion – pennlive.com

Organizations should know that being safe and mitigating risk is not contrary to meeting goals quickly or innovating, nor is it synonymous with being bureaucratic.

These are serious concerns reported here and hopefully SpaceX learns to see worker injuries as serious setbacks to schedules and major drains on human resources.

At SpaceX, worker injuries soar in Elon Musk’s rush to Mars (reuters.com)

All of my safety and mission assurance experience is screaming at me on this one…

Watch Chinese astronauts light a match on Tiangong space station (video) | Space

Removing and not replacing local heat safety standards doesn’t reduce regulatory uncertainty, it just places new liability on individual businesses | New Texas law will get rid of water breaks for outdoor workers amid extreme heat – ABC News via https://abcnews.go.com/US/new-texas-law-nullify-local-ordinances-protecting-outdoor/story?id=100272286

Businesses must still comply with the “general duty clause” of the occupational safety and health act which requires employers to provide a workplace free from recognized hazards. OSHA rule making is needed here. That will reduce regulatory uncertainty.

An ineffective rollout is partly to blame for getting us into the current polarization on this issue, but effective masks are well-understood and a key part of mitigating exposures to all kinds of airborne contaminants.

Masks Work. Distorting Science to Dispute the Evidence Doesn’t. | https://scientificamerican.com/article/masks-work-distorting-science-to-dispute-the-evidence-doesnt/?amp;text=Masks…

I mean, I have one… and I understand why people like to cook with them over the alternatives. But, burning anything indoors creates pollutants that can increase the risk of disease, especially in the vulnerable.

US Safety Agency to Consider Ban on Gas Stoves Amid Health Fears – Bloomberg

Not sure that I get why normal labor market behavior would be considered “rage applying”. People go where they are most valued.

https://t.co/zCLFkREOI4

I find these articles so frustrating… https://t.co/zg1PGcfilk

Yes, changing the time we get up by an hour (either way) out of pace with the sun has negative safety and health implications, but

• The sun’s position relative to the clock is different depending on latitude and your relative longitude within your timezone; every area is affected differently.
• The clock time by which we start work or school doesn’t have to be fixed. Every locality can change these as it makes sense.

So, let’s all do what is best for safety and health where we live, regardless of what the government says the time is.

Authors’ names have ‘astonishing’ influence on peer reviewers: https://t.co/42tMZ4Nv4O

Peer review as it is intentioned is a good and necessary part of science, but it isn’t usually executed that way. Single-blind peer review (where reviewers know the authors, but the authors don’t know the reviewers) really needs to end. Double-blind peer review and open, post-publication peer review are better models.

Failure occurs when the environment exceeds the limits of a design. Reliability goes down as an environment changes from the one that was anticipated by the designer to one that is more extreme.

(2) CMU CEE on X: ““Melting roads and runways are no longer a hypothetical — and we know with increased emissions it’s only going to get hotter.” @CostaSamaras explains to @washingtonpost . #climatechange #infrastructure https://t.co/dnlRGfoZ1A” / X