As The Oscars Approach, Hollywood Grapples With AI’s Growing Influence On Filmmaking

BY HOLLY WILLIS

PROFESSOR OF CINEMATIC ARTS,

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

I teach a course on AI and filmmaking at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, and lately, rather than planning each session well in advance, I’ve been structuring the class the night before. I’ll browse platforms like X, Substack and YouTube, selecting the most provocative articles and video clips to present the following morning.

It’s a testament to how quickly artificial intelligence’s relationship to filmmaking is evolving: Each week brings new – often startling – developments.

The next morning in class, my students and I debate the ethics, aesthetics and the storytelling changes taking place in these collaborations with AI.

And we’re not alone: Throughout Hollywood, everyone – aspiring actors and filmmakers, stars, screenwriters and studio execs – seems to have a take on what’s coming next. But I think three trends in particular are going to be hot topics of conversation at this year’s Oscars parties.

Nothing uncanny about this clip

In February 2026, a 15-second AI-generated video clip of Tom Cruise battling Brad Pitt on a burned-out highway overpass went viral.

Depending on the viewer, the video elicited either admiration, outrage or existential hand-wringing.

Created by Irish filmmaker Ruairi Robinson via a generative-AI tool called Seedance 2.0, the video marked yet another milestone in the propulsive growth of AI tools.

Seedance 2.0 – which was developed by ByteDance, the Chinese company behind TikTok – is now one of the many AI tools available to create short-form video clips. But unlike most AI-generated videos, Pitt and Cruise don’t look creepy, uncanny or animated in the clip, which almost perfectly mimics live-action footage. The appearance of two A-list stars in a fairly realistic scene created by a relatively unknown director using stolen likenesses jolted the industry.

The backlash was swift. Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter, claiming that the video was generated from a dataset that most likely includes Disney’s copyrighted characters. The actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA, pointed to the video’s “blatant infringement” of the actors’ likenesses, as well as their voices.

“SAG-AFTRA stands with the studios in condemning the blatant infringement enabled by Bytedance’s new AI video model Seedance 2.0,” the guild wrote in a statement. This practice, the guild added, “undercuts the ability of human talent to earn a livelihood,” while disregarding “law, ethics, industry standards and basic principles of consent.”

In class, after watching the video, we explored the ethics of using someone’s likeness without permission, the challenges facing actors who build careers based on their unique ability to embody characters, and what the future holds for our understanding of acting.

If filmmakers can prompt fake actors to deliver precise performances, where does that leave human actors?

In with the old

Since 2023, the skyline of the Las Vegas strip has been dominated by an illuminated orb called the Sphere: an entertainment complex featuring a 360-degree LED screen covering 160,000 square feet (14,864 square meters). The Sphere recently surpassed 2 million tickets sold for a reimagining of the classic 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz.”

The film, which premiered in August 2024, was shortened, its color was enhanced, and it was stretched to expand across the interior of the dome. AI was used to transfer the imagery from the film’s original, modest aspect ratio to the giant dome. This required generating new imagery around the edges of the original shots in what’s known as “AI outpainting.” The technology was also deployed to boost the original film’s resolution and to enhance certain scenes.

Some critics fretted that this fairly radical augmentation of the original classic would offend viewers. Instead, it has drawn them in droves to the Sphere, where they’ve been willing to shell out between US$100 and $200 per ticket.

Not bad for a movie about a girl from Kansas made in 1939.

Given the resounding success of “The Wizard of Oz,” experts expect producers to plumb the film archives for other potential hits and enhance them with AI before screening them in venues as varied as IMAX theaters and Cosm, another 360-degree dome with locations in Los Angeles, Dallas and Atlanta.

Or AI can simply be used to create material that was never completed for a historic film.

In fact, The New Yorker recently profiled AI media entrepreneur Edward Saatchi, who is working to recreate and reincorporate lost footage from Orson Welles’ 1942 feature “The Magnificent Ambersons.” While Welles was in Brazil shooting a documentary, executives at RKO Radio Pictures reedited the film without his approval after a poor preview screening. They cut around 45 minutes, replaced the original ending with a happier one and destroyed most of the footage that had been removed.

Saatchi’s idea is to build a dataset that includes the existing film, as well as scripts, notes, images and even new performances by actors. Then he plans to use his AI platform, Showrunner, to create new scenes from this data.

While Saatchi hopes to honor the director’s creative vision by producing the film he originally intended, his efforts open up some thorny questions.

Is it appropriate to take an existing artwork and revise it without the creator’s input? Isn’t there something sacrosanct about a film, the intentions of the director and the performances of the actors in a film’s original form? To what extent should these questions be overlooked if refashioning old movies will introduce them to new audiences?

Fewer opportunities?

There’s also an undercurrent of anxiety in my classes. What will happen, my students often wonder, once they graduate?

They’re worried that within a year or two, AI will have replaced entry-level film industry jobs, from concept artists to apprentice-level editors, before they’ve even had a chance to enter the workforce.

They have reason to fear.

In 2024, the Animation Guild published a sobering report claiming that by 2026, “creative workers will be facing an era of disruption, defined by the consolidation of some job roles, the replacement of existing job roles with new ones, and the elimination of many jobs entirely.”

Some of those predictions have borne out: 41,000 jobs in film and television have disappeared in Los Angeles County alone over the past three years.

But I’ve tried to counter the hard statistics with some stories of thoughtful practices.

For example, filmmaker Paul Trillo at the AI studio Asteria has talked about how he seeks to keep artists at the center of the process. When he detailed the company’s work on a music video for the singer-songwriter Cuco, he was keen to highlight the number of artists working on the project. Yes, AI tools were used. But they were integrated in a way that replaced the tedious work, not the creative practice.

“Rather than removing [artists] from the process, it actually allowed them to do a lot more so a small team can dream a lot bigger,” Trillo explains at the end of the video.

In January 2026, the management consulting firm McKinsey published a report that largely echoes Trillo’s positive outlook. It forecasts more adoption of AI throughout the industry. But it also points to ways that the technology could lead to different kinds of work and open up new possibilities. For example, as AI-generated scenes become commonplace, studios will need technicians who know how to blend real footage with digitally created worlds. And as AI lowers the cost of producing polished films and shows, it could allow more “micro-studios” and independent filmmakers to create professional-quality content.

At the same time, the report also quotes a studio executive who concedes that AI could represent “a more significant platform shift than we have ever seen before in our industry.”

So it’s no wonder my students, along with varied critics, commentators and industry professionals, are nervous.

However, from where I stand, I’m convinced that the industry will weather this radical disruption. It’s adapted to big changes in the past: the addition of sound in the 1920s, the threat posed by videotape in the 1980s and streaming in the 2000s.

In the end, people will always crave new, artfully told stories. While the filmmaking tools and job market may be in transition, that core need for storytelling is not going away.

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The Global Health System Can Build Back Better After US Aid Cuts – Here’s How

A study volunteer in an Ebola vaccine trial receives inoculation at Redemption Hospital in Monrovia in 2017. NIAID/Wikimedia Commons

BY JONATHAN E. COHEN

PROFESSOR OF CLINICAL POPULATION AND

PUBLIC HEALTH SCIENCES, KECK SCHOOL OF

MEDICINE AND DIRECTOR OF POLICY 

ENGAGEMENT, INSTITUTE ON INEQUALITIES

AND GLOBAL HEALTH, UNIVERSITY OF

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Steep cuts in US government funding have thrown much of the field of global health into a state of fear and uncertainty. Once a crown jewel of US foreign policy, valued at some US$12 billion a year, global health has been relegated to a corner of a restructured State Department governed by an “America First” agenda.

Whatever emerges from the current crisis, it will look very different from the past.

As someone who has spent a 25-year career in global health and human rights and now teaches the subject to graduate students in California, I am often asked whether young people can hope for a future in the field. My answer is a resounding yes.

More than ever, we need the dedication, humility and vision of the next generation to reinvent the field of global health, so that it is never again so vulnerable to the political fortunes of a single country. And more than ever, I am hopeful this will be the case.

To understand the source of my hope, it is important to recall what brought US engagement in global health to its current precipice – and how a historic response to specific diseases paradoxically left African health systems vulnerable.

Disease and dependency

Over two decades ago, the field of global health as we currently know it emerged out of the global response to HIV/Aids – among the deadliest pandemics in human history. The pandemic principally affected people of reproductive age and babies born to HIV-positive parents.

The creation of the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) in 2003 was at the time the largest-ever bilateral programme to combat a single disease. It redefined the field of global health for decades to come, with the US at its centre. While both the donors and issues in the field would multiply over the years, global health would never relinquish its origins in American leadership against HIV/Aids.

Pepfar placed African nations in a state of extreme dependence on the US. We are now witnessing the results – not for the first time. The global financial crisis of 2008 reduced development assistance to health, which generated new thinking about financing and domestic resource mobilisation.

Yet, the US continued to underwrite Africa’s disease responses through large contracts to American universities and implementers. This was for good reason, given the urgency of the problem, the growing strength of Africa’s health systems as a result of Pepfar, and the moral duty of the world’s richest country.

With the rise of right-wing populism and the polarising effects of COVID-19, global health would come to be seen by many Americans as an elite enterprise. The apparent trade-off between public health countermeasures and economic life during COVID-19 – a false choice to experts who know a healthy workforce to be a precondition for a strong economy – alienated many voters from the advice of disease prevention experts. The imperative to “vaccinate the world” and play a leadership role in global health security lacked a strong domestic constituency. It proved no match for monopolistic priorities of the pharmaceutical industry and the insularity and economic anxieties of millions of Americans.

This history set the stage for the sudden abdication of US global health leadership in early 2025. By the time the Department of Government Efficiency came for USAID, many viewed global health as a relic of the early response to HIV/Aids, an excuse for other governments to spend less on health, or an industry of elites. The field was an easy target, and the White House must have known it.

Yet therein lies the hope. If global health came of age around a single disease, an exercise of US soft power, and a cadre of elite experts, it now has an opportunity to change itself from the ground up. What can emerge is a new global health compact, in which African governments design robust health systems for themselves and enlist the international community to assist from behind.

Opportunity to build back better

To build a new global health compact for Africa, the first change must be from a focus on combating individual diseases to ensuring that all people have the opportunity for health and well-being throughout their lives. Rather than allowing entire health systems to be defined by the response to HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and malaria, Africa needs integrated systems that promote:

primary care, which brings services for the majority of health needs closer to communities

health promotion, which enables people to take control of all aspects of their health and well-being

long-term care, which helps all people function and maintain quality of life over their entire lifespan.

No global trend compels this shift more than population ageing, which will soon engulf every nation as a result of lengthening life expectancy and declining fertility. As the proportion of older adults grows to outstrip that of children, societies need systems of integrated healthcare that help people manage multiple diseases. They don’t need fragmented programmes that produce conflicting medical advice, dangerous drug interactions, and crippling bureaucracy. Time is running out to make this fundamental shift.

Second, there is a need to shift the relationship between low-income and high-income nations towards shared investment in the service of local needs. This is beginning to happen in some places, and it will require greater sacrifices on all sides.

Low-income governments need to spend a higher percentage of their GDP on healthcare. That will in turn require addressing the many factors that stymie the redistribution of wealth, from corruption to debt to lack of progressive taxation. The US and other high-income countries need to pay their fair share, while also sharing decision-making over how global public goods, from vaccines to disease surveillance to health workers, are shared and distributed in an interconnected world.

Third, there is need to change the narrative of global health in wealthy countries such as the US to better connect to the concerns of voters who are hostile to globalism itself. This means addressing people’s real fears that public health measures will cost them their job, force them to close their business, or advance a pharmaceutical industry agenda. It means justifying global health in terms that people can relate to and agree with – that is, helping to save lives without taking responsibility for other countries’ health systems.

It means forging unlikely alliances between those who believe in leadership from the so-called global south and those who take an insular view of America’s role in the world.

Leading from behind

Make no mistake. I am not counting on this – or any – US administration to reinvent global health on terms that are more responsive to current disease trends, more equitable between nations, and more relevant to American voters.

But nor would I want them to. To create the global health for the future, the leadership must come not only from the US, but rather from a shared commitment among the community of nations to give and receive according to their capacities and needs. And that is something to hope for.

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Biden’s Immigration Order Won’t Fix Problems Quickly – 4 Things To Know About What’s Changing

President Joe Biden speaks about his executive order limiting asylum on June 4, 2024, at the White House. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

BY JEAN  LANTZ REISZ

CLINICAL ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF 

LAW, CO-DIRECTOR, USC IMMIGRATION

CLINIC, UNIVERSITY 0F SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Immigration is a top issue in the upcoming presidential election – and President Joe Biden’s new executive order restricting migrants’ ability to apply for asylum is likely to further elevate the subject in national politics.

The number of undocumented migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has soared in recent years, with 249,785 arrests taking place along the border in December 2023. That marks a 13% rise from the 222,018 migrants arrested by the Border Patrol along the U.S.-Mexico border in December 2022.

Jean Lantz Reisz, an immigration law scholar at the University of Southern California, explains four key things to know about how this executive order will take effect and influence immigration trends.

1. The executive order is basically an asylum ban

Biden announced his executive order on June 4, 2024. It prevents everyone who crosses the U.S.-Mexico border without a visa, and not passing through an official port of entry, from seeking asylum. It goes into effect when the number of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border each day exceeds an average of 2,500.

There have generally been more than 2,500 people without visas crossing the U.S.-Mexico border for each day of Biden’s entire presidency.

Effectively, this is a ban on asylum, meaning the legal right for undocumented immigrants to remain in the U.S. because of the harm they face in their home countries.

Under Biden’s order, some undocumented migrants who express a fear of returning to their home countries may be eligible for other kinds of legal protections – for example, legal protections intended for torture survivors.

In order to get this special legal protection, migrants would have to show U.S. border and immigration officials a lot of evidence outlining the danger they would face in their home countries. They would need to show more evidence than is required for asylum-seekers. Migrants will generally not have this evidence on hand and, as a result, will not receive any kind of legal protection or chance to stay in the U.S.

Over the past decade, including during Biden’s presidency, approximately two-thirds of people who applied for asylum while they were in deportation proceedings were granted asylum or another kind of legal protection that allowed them to stay in the U.S., according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data organization at Syracuse University.

Biden’s order means that many individuals who previously would have been entitled to asylum, per U.S. law, will now be expelled to Mexico or their home countries without the opportunity to apply for asylum.

2. This could lead to a rise in undocumented minors crossing the border solo

Many individuals who reach the U.S.-Mexico border and cross into the U.S. without a visa or an online appointment to meet with U.S. Customs and Border Protection will be quickly turned back and deported to Mexico or returned to their home countries. The U.S. will need cooperation from Mexico to be able to turn back non-Mexican citizens to Mexico. Mexico currently accepts Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan citizens deported from the U.S.

In December 2023, about one-fourth of the migrants apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border were from Mexico, while another one-fourth were from El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras. The largest group of apprehended migrants were from other countries, including Venezuela and China.

Biden’s order will not apply to people who are under 18 and cross the U.S.-Mexico border without a parent or guardian. These children will be detained and placed in deportation proceedings where they can seek asylum or other immigration protections.

This creates the risk that desperate parents will send their children alone across the border. This happened from March 2020 through May 2023, when COVID-19-related border restrictions, called Title 42, similarly banned undocumented immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border from seeking asylum. This restriction did not apply to unaccompanied minors. It resulted in a sharp spike in undocumented minors crossing the U.S. southern border from 2020 through 2023.

3. Biden is taking a page out of Donald Trump’s book

Biden is basing this executive order, in part, on an immigration statute called 212(f), which gives the president very broad authority to suspend the entry of certain noncitizens because it would be “detrimental” to U.S. interests.

Former President Donald Trump cited this law when he implemented a travel ban that temporarily suspended the entry of noncitizens from seven countries, including five Muslim-majority countries, in 2017. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the third version of this ban as being lawful in 2018. Biden reversed the ban in 2021.

4. The executive order won’t be so easy to implement

Biden’s ability to actually reduce the number of migrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border without a visa or any other kind of authorization will depend on several factors.

The president will need Mexico to accept more deported citizens of different countries in order for the U.S. to swiftly turn away migrants. U.S. Border Patrol and immigration agencies have also been overwhelmed by the large influx of undocumented migrants crossing the border. They cannot easily apprehend and screen all migrants or quickly respond to migrants’ applications to stay in the U.S. in immigration courts, which have a historic and massive backlog.

Quickly processing and deporting migrants back to their home countries will also be an obstacle that could limit the order’s effectiveness. U.S. immigration officials will first need to determine whether someone who states a fear of returning to their country qualifies for other kinds of legal protection that are not asylum.

Deporting a Mexican citizen or a Cuban, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan or Haitian citizen can be done quickly and easily, since Mexico will accept them. Deporting migrants from other countries would require their governments to help them get the necessary travel documents and, in most cases, arrange airplane flights.

Still, Biden’s order may deter many migrants who plan to cross the border in the hopes of being allowed to remain in the U.S. and seek asylum.

Love May Be Timeless, But The Way We Talk About It Isn’t − The Ancient Greeks’ Ideas About Desire Challenge Modern-Day Readers, Lovers And Even Philosophers

Joan Maria Grovin stars as Antigone in a 1959 broadcast production in Munich. Klaus Heirler/picture alliance via Getty Images

BY DAVID ALBERTSON

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF RELIGION

USC DORNSIFE COLLEGE OF LETTERS,

ARTS AND SCIENCES

Every year as Valentine’s Day approaches, people remind themselves that not all expressions of love fit the stereotypes of modern romance. V-Day cynics might plan a “Galentines” night for female friends or toast their platonic “Palentines” instead.

In other words, the holiday shines a cold light on the limits of our romantic imaginations, which hew to a familiar script. Two people are supposed to meet, the arrows of Cupid strike them unwittingly, and they have no choice but to fall in love. They face obstacles, they overcome them, and then they run into each other’s arms. Love is a delightful sport, and neither reason nor the gods have anything to do with it.

This model of romance flows from Roman poetry, medieval chivalry and Renaissance literature, especially Shakespeare. But as a professor of religion, I study an alternative vision of eros: medieval Christian mystics who viewed the body’s desires as immediately and inescapably linked to God, reason and sometimes even suffering.

Yet this way of thinking about love has even older roots.

My favorite class to teach traces connections between eros and transcendence, starting with ancient Greek literature. Centuries before Christianity, the Greeks had their own ideas about desire. Erotic love was not a pleasant diversion, but a high-stakes trial to be survived, quivering with perilous energy. These poets’ and philosophers’ ideas can stimulate our thinking today – and perhaps our loving as well.

Deadly serious

For the ancient Greeks, eros – which could be translated as “yearning” or “passionate desire” – was a matter of life and death, even a danger to avoid.

In the tragedies of Sophocles, when someone feels eros, typically something is about to go terribly wrong, if it hasn’t already.

Take “Antigone,” written in Athens in the fifth century B.C.E. The play opens with the title character mourning the death of her brother Polyneices, who betrayed her father and killed her other brother in battle.

After this civil war, King Creon, Antigone’s uncle, forbids citizens from burying Polyneices: an insult to his memory, but also a violation of the city’s religion. When Antigone insists on burying him anyway, she is condemned to death.

The play is often interpreted as a lesson on duty: Creon executing the laws of the state versus Antigone defending the laws of the gods. Yet, uncomfortably for modern readers, Antigone’s devotion to Polyneices seems to be more than sisterly love.

Antigone leaps at the chance to die next to her brother. “Loving, I shall lie with him, yes, with my loved one,” she swears to her law-abiding sister, “when I have dared the crime of piety.”

Were Polyneices her husband, child, parent or even fiancé, Antigone says, she would never have violated the law. But her desire for Polyneices is so great that she is willing to face “marriage to Death.” She compares the cave where Creon buries her alive with the bedroom on a wedding night. Rather than starve, she hangs herself with her own linen veil.

Scholars have asked whether Antigone has too much eros or too little – and what exactly she desires. Does she lust for justice? For piety? For her deceased brother’s body? Her desire is somehow embodied and otherworldly at the same time, calling our own erotic boundaries into question.

Eventually, Creon’s passion for civic order consumes him as well. His son, Antigone’s fiancé, stabs himself in grief as he embraces her corpse – and hearing of this, his mother kills herself as well. Eros races through the royal family like a plague, leveling them all.

No wonder the chorus prays to the goddess of love, pleading for protection from her violent whims. “Who has you within him is mad,” the chorus laments. “You twist the minds of the just.”

Embrace the risk

This leads to a second lesson from the Greeks: Love might make you a better person, but it also might not.

Rather than speak in his own voice, the philosopher Plato wrote dialogues starring his teacher, Socrates, who had a lot to say about love and friendship.

In one dialogue, “Lysis,” Socrates jokes that if all you want is romantic love, the best plan is to insult your crush until they thirst for attention. In another, “Symposium,” Socrates’ young student Phaedrus imagines an indomitable army entirely comprising people in love. What courage and strength they would show off for each other!

In the “Phaedrus” dialogue, foolish lovers seek a friends-with-benefits arrangement, afraid of the unwieldy passions that come with falling in love. Socrates entertains their question: Is it better to separate affection from sexual entanglements, since the force of desire can erode one’s ethical principles?

His answer is emphatically “No.” For Socrates, sexual attraction steers the soul toward divine goodness and beauty, just as great art or acts of justice can do.

The idea of friends with benefits, he warns, cleaves the ethical self from the erotic self. Here and elsewhere, Plato insists that to be whole people, we must embrace the risks that come with love.

A necessary madness

Socrates has one more lesson to teach. Erotic love is indeed a kind of madness – but a madness necessary for wisdom.

In “Phaedrus,” Socrates suggests that love is a madness given by the gods, a fire blazing like artistic inspiration or sacred rites. Sexual desire disorients us, but only because it is reorienting lovers toward another world. The “goal of loving,” according to one dialogue, is to “catch sight” of pure beauty and goodness.

In erotic longing we bump up against something greater than us, a thread that we can trace back to the divine. And for Socrates, this pathway from eros to God is reason. In desire, a shimmer of light cracks through the broken crust of the material world, inspiring us to yearn for things that last.

The contemporary philosopher Jean-Luc Marion has suggested that modern academic philosophy has totally failed when it comes to the topic of desire. There are vast subfields devoted to the philosophies of language, mind, law, science and mathematics, yet curiously there is no philosophy of eros.

Like the ancient Greeks and medieval Christians, Marion warns philosophers against assuming that love is irrational. Far from it. If love looks like madness, he says, that’s because it possesses a “greater rationality.”

In the words of another French philosopher, Blaise Pascal: “The heart has its reasons, which reason knows nothing of.”

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A Bottle Of Scotch Recently Sold For $2.7 Million – What’s Behind Such Outrageous Prices?

BY HOVIG TCHALIAN

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

When a rare bottle of Scotch whisky sold for US$2.7 million in November 2023, I was stunned, but I wasn’t surprised.

The whiskey market has been booming for some time.

Bourbon brands like Pappy Van Winkle from Buffalo Trace distillery are selling for astronomical prices in the secondary market. Japanese whiskies, which have become popular over the past decade, now fetch prices up to 50 times higher what they did a decade ago.

And in July 2022, a single Ardbeg whisky barrel, aged since 1975, with enough liquid for about 500 bottles, sold at auction for around $19 million. In 1997, the entire Ardbeg distillery had been purchased by Glenmorangie Distillery for roughly $11 million.

How could a single cask of Scotch whisky sell for nearly twice the value of an entire distillery purchased just over two decades earlier?

I’ve been studying specialty markets for a decade, and I see at least two stories to unpack.

One is economic, where items in low supply, like rare bottles or barrels, sell for high prices. And prices in the whiskey market have been rising rapidly over the last two decades, fueled in part by investors. Some investors see luxury collectibles, such as high-end whiskey bottles or casks, as an alternative to other assets like stocks and bonds. (There are, however, signs that the luxury market is softening due to oversupply.)

But a second, overlooked – and arguably more interesting – explanation is social. It revolves around the increasing focus on the purported authenticity of craft products – especially ones like Scotch whisky, which trade on their heritage as much as their flavor.

A ‘brown spirit’ boom

The history of whiskey is one of booms and busts.

Whiskey has been produced in Scotland and Ireland since at least the late 1400s. The spirit spread to the rest of Europe in the mid-to-late 1700s. The late 1800s and early 1900s were boom years, especially for Irish whiskey. The period also witnessed innovations such as aging the spirit in oak barrels, which enhances its flavor. (Scotch, Japanese, Canadian and Indian whisky is spelled without the “e,” and Irish and American whiskey is spelled with the “e.” Whiskey is the general category label.)

In the U.S., Prohibition moved distilling underground until it made a midcentury comeback. Famously, the advent of “white spirits” like vodka and gin pushed down prices of “brown spirits” like whiskey starting in the 1970s. This led to what Scotch distillers call the “whisky loch,” or “lake” – the accumulation of large stores of matured whisky and the resulting shuttering of many whisky producers.

But whiskey has made a comeback since 2000. Prices of some bottles, including highly prized single-malt whiskies produced at a single distillery, have risen by almost 600% over the last decade. American bourbon has also seen a spike in interest – and prices – since at least 2016.

Long perceived as an inferior knockoff of Scotch whisky, Japanese whiskies have also experienced price surges. The House of Suntory, the oldest Japanese distiller, recently announced its own substantial price increases in the primary market, in some cases by as much as 100%. And India, long the largest consumer of Scotch whisky, is also seeing its distilleries produce their own single-malt whiskies and gradually move up-market [https://www.theiwsr.com/the-volatility-of-indian-whisky-markets/].

While these increases have largely been confined to the higher end of the market, prices of affordable bottles have gone up, too.

Craving real connections

Not long after the sale of the 1926 Macallan for $2.7 million, Merriam-Webster named “authentic” its 2023 word of the year.

The term’s popularity can be attributed to advances in artificial intelligence – and, with it, misinformation. But much of the focus on authenticity is also the result of the longing for more in-person connections in an increasingly virtual world. People want authentic experiences – or what look like authentic experiences. And that includes the products that they buy.

Authenticity is a notoriously difficult concept to define. But it tends to revolve around following a set of internal or external standards. That might mean following your values or your heart in order to cultivate your best, most real or most authentic self. When it comes to products – think vintage cars, artisanal foods or craft beer – it could mean those products must meet certain criteria to be considered authentic. For example, according to standards defined by the microbrewery movement, in order for craft beer to be considered authentic, it must be produced in-house in small batches.

These sorts of distinctions can be difficult for the average consumer to grasp, and authenticity can be easy to fake. The beer brand Samuel Adams, for instance, attempts to signal its authenticity by associating itself with the people, places and events of the American Revolution. But the brewery also got in trouble for marketing itself as a craft beer without making its beer in-house.

Putting a price on authenticity

Intangible qualities make whiskey special – aspects such as the aroma, or “nose”; its complexity; and its lingering flavor, or “finish.”

But to boost whiskey’s value, purveyors of high-end whiskey convey the product’s heritage.

A whiskey’s unique locale – what wine enthusiasts call “terroir” – matters greatly to its perceived authenticity.

During and after the whisky loch, scotch producers realized they were sitting on large stocks of unsold whisky. Much of that whisky was produced and aged starting in the 1960s, before the advent of automation, faster distilling and new ingredients. The desire to return to those more authentic, simpler times allowed distillers to rewrite the stories of those stores.

Scotch whisky has a long-standing reputation as more historically significant – and, therefore, more authentic. Despite research suggesting that even most expert judges can’t distinguish different categories of whisky, a Scotch whisky bottle can sell for as much as 100 times the price of a similarly aged – and similarly complex – Canadian whisky.

One recent study of Canadian whisky showed how distilleries can even use their physical features and local character to enhance perceptions of their spirits’ authenticity. Bottles from older distilleries were deemed more authentic – and could sell for more. Those from newer, factorylike buildings had less appeal to consumers.

There’s a miragelike nature to all of this. A product can be considered authentic if everyone believes and acts like it is.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the history of whiskey is one of perception, not necessarily quality. And this perception helps drive its economic fortunes.

So the next time you search for a nice bottle of whiskey for yourself or as a gift, consider the story and history that’s amplifying its price.

With The End Of The Hollywood Writers And Actors Strikes, The Creator Economy Is The Next Frontier For Organized Labor

THE CONVERSATION

YouTuber Matthew Smith, who posts under the name DangMattSmith, takes a selfie with fans at VidCon Anaheim in June 2023. Unique Nicole/Getty Images

BY DAVID CRAIG AND STUART CUNNINGHAM

Hollywood writers and actors recently proved that they could go toe-to-toe with powerful media conglomerates. After going on strike in the summer of 2023, they secured better pay, more transparency from streaming services and safeguards from having their work exploited or replaced by artificial intelligence.

But the future of entertainment extends well beyond Hollywood. Social media creators – otherwise known as influencers, YouTubers, TikTokers, vloggers and live streamers – entertain and inform a vast portion of the planet.

For the past decade, we’ve mapped the contours and dimensions of the global social media entertainment industry. Unlike their Hollywood counterparts, these creators struggle to be seen as entertainers worthy of basic labor protections.

Platform policies and government regulations have proved capricious or neglectful. Meanwhile, creators’ bottom-up initiatives to collectively organize have sputtered.

Living on the edge

Industry estimates regarding the size and scale of the creator economy vary. But Citibank estimates there are over 120 million creators, and an April 2023 Goldman Sachs report predicted that the creator economy would double in size, from US$250 billion to $500 billion, by 2027.

According to Forbes, the “Top 50 Creators” altogether have 2.6 billion followers and have hauled in an estimated $700 million in earnings. The list includes MrBeast, who performs stunts and records giveaways, and makeup artist-cum-true crime podcaster Bailey Sarian.

The windfalls earned by these social media stars are the exception, not the norm.

The venture capitalist firm SignalFire estimates that less than 4% of creators make over $100,000 a year, although YouTube-funded research points to a rising middle class of creators who are able to sustain careers with relatively modest followings.

These are the users who find themselves most vulnerable to opaque changes to platform policies and algorithms.

Platforms like to “move fast and break things,” to use Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s infamous expression. And since the creator economy relies on social media platforms to reach audiences, creators’ livelihoods are subject to rapid, iterative changes in platforms’ features, services and agreements.

Yes, various platforms have introduced business opportunities for creators, such as YouTube’s advertising partnership feature or Twitch’s virtual goods store. However, the platforms’ terms of use can flip on a switch. For example, in September 2022, Twitch changed its fee structure. Some streamers who were retaining 70% of all subscription revenue generated from their accounts saw this proportion drop to 50%.

In 2020, TikTok, facing rising competition from YouTube Shorts and Instagram reels, launched its billion-dollar Creator Fund. The fund was supposed to allow creators to get directly paid for their content. Instead, creators complained that every 1,000 views only translated to a few cents. TikTok suspended the fund in November 2023.

Bias as a feature, not a bug

The livelihoods of many fashion, beauty, fitness and food creators depend on deals brokered with brands that want these influencers to promote goods or services to their followers.

Yet throughout the creator economy, people of color and those identifying as LGBTQ+ have encountered bias. Unequal and unfair compensation from brands is a recurring issue, with one 2021 report revealing a pay gap of roughly 30% between white creators and creators of color.

Along with brand biases, platforms can exacerbate systemic bias. Creator scholar Sophie Bishop has demonstrated how nontransparent algorithms can categorize “desirability” among influencers along lines of race, gender, class and sexual orientation.

Then there’s what creator scholar Zoë Glatt calls the “intimacy triple bind”: Marginalized creators are at higher risk of trolling and harassment, they secure lower fees for advertising, and they are expected to divulge more personal details to generate more engagement and revenue.

Couple these precarious conditions with the whims and caprices of volatile online communities that can turn beloved creators into villains in the blink of a text or post, and even the world’s most successful creators live on a precipice of losing their livelihoods.

Rumblings of solidarity

Unlike their counterparts in the legacy media industries, creators have neither taken easily nor well to collective action as they operate from their bedrooms and fight for more eyeballs.

Yet some members of this creator class recognize that the bedroom-boardroom power imbalance is a bottom line matter that requires bottom-up initiative.

The Creators Guild of America, or CGA, which launched in August 2023, is but one of many successors to the original Internet Creators’ Guild, which folded in 2019. Paradoxically, CGA describes itself as a “professional service organization,” not a labor union, yet claims to offer benefits “similar to those offered by unions.”

There are other movements afoot: A group of TikTok creators formed a Discord group in September 2022 to discuss unionizing. There’s also the Twitch Unity Guild, a program launched in December 2022 for networking, development and celebration and includes a dedicated Discord space. In response to the rampant bias in influencer marketing, creator-led firms like “F–k You Pay Me ” are demanding greater fairness, transparency and accountability from brands and advertisers.

Twitch streamers are already seeing some of their organizing efforts pay off. In June 2023, after a year of repeated changes in streamer fees and brand deals, the company capitulated in response to the backlash of their top streamers threatening to leave.

None of these initiatives has yet attained the legal status of unions such as the Writers Guild of America. Meanwhile, efforts by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists to recruit creators have proved limited. Legal scholar Sara Shiffman has written about how SAG-AFTRA provides creators with health and retirement benefits, but offers no resources to ensure fair and equitable compensation from platforms or advertisers. Nonetheless, while on strike, SAG-AFTRA threatened creators that partnered with studios with a lifetime ban from joining the union.

And despite these bottom-up efforts, the tech behemoths refuse to recognize creators’ fledgling organizations. When a union for YouTubers formed in Germany in 2018, YouTube refused to negotiate with it. Nonetheless, you’ll see companies trot out their biggest stars when they find themselves under regulatory scrutiny. That’s what happened when TikTok sponsored creators to lobby politicians who were debating banning the platform.

An invisible class of labor

Meanwhile, most governments have failed to provide support for – or even recognition of – creator rights.

Within the U.S., creators “barely exist” in official records, as technology reporters Drew Harwell and Taylor Lorenz recently pointed out in The Washington Post. The U.S. Census Bureau makes no mention of social media as a profession; it is invisible as a distinctive class of labor.

To date, the Federal Trade Commission is the only U.S. agency to introduce regulation tied to the work of creators, and it’s limited to disclosure guidelines for advertising and sponsored content.

Even as the European Union has operated at the forefront of tech and platform policy, creators rate scant mention in the body’s laws. Writing about the EU’s 2022 Digital Services Act, legal scholars Bram Duivendvoorde and Catalina Goanta criticize the EU for leaving “influencer marketing out of the material scope of its specific rules,” a blind spot that they describe as “one of its main pitfalls.”

The success of the 2023 Hollywood strikes could be just the beginning of a larger global movement for creator rights. But in order for this new class of creators to access the full breadth of their economic and human rights – to borrow from the movie “Jaws” – we’re gonna need a bigger boat.

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There’s A Financial Literacy Gender Gap − And Older Women Are Eager For Education That Meets Their Needs

BY LILA RABINOVICH

SOCIAL SCIENTIST, 

DOMSIFE COLLEGE OF LETTERS, ARTS AND SCIENCES

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Every day, families across the U.S. have to make difficult decisions about budgeting, spending, insurance, investments, savings, retirement and on and on. When faced with these choices, financial literacy – that is, knowing how to make informed decisions about money – is key.

Yet, Americans in general aren’t very financially literate. And recent research suggests women are less financially literate than men, regardless of their schooling, income or marital status.

As a social scientist who studies aging and the social safety net, I recently took part in a large analysis of older women’s financial literacy. My team and I found that men’s financial literacy scores were 25% higher than women’s on average, even though the two groups showed no difference in math skills or overall cognitive ability.

Black and Hispanic women saw an even greater financial literacy gender gap, with scores that were, on average, 40% to 45% lower than those of white, non-Hispanic men.

Why financial literacy matters later in life

This gap is a big problem, especially as women approach older age. Because they tend to live longer – almost six years more than men, according to the latest figures – and leave the workforce earlier, women face longer retirements.

And when they reach retirement age, women often have inadequate savings, in part because they face more family-related career interruptions and are concentrated in lower-paying jobs.

Consider that in 2020, women who worked full time earned a median of US$891 a week, versus men’s $1,082. Their career interruptions, lower earnings and earlier retirements mean that female Social Security recipients get only 80% of the benefits that men do.

Financial education can’t erase the effects of decades of structural inequality, of course. But the evidence shows that it can make a difference by helping women make more informed decisions for their future.

Demand for financial education is high

Only 16% of women ages 40 to 65 have ever received any financial education, according to a survey of women my colleagues and I fielded in 2022. Among African American, Native American and Asian American women, this figure falls to 8% to 10%.

Our survey also showed that behaviors that can help with financial security are patchy among respondents. Close to 30% never put money into an emergency fund or savings account, nearly 40% never put money into an investment or retirement account, and 60% have never talked to a financial professional. Tellingly, only 20% said they felt relaxed about their financial future.

But not all is doom and gloom: More than 70% of women in our survey said they were interested in receiving financial education. Demand was especially high among Hispanic/Latina (93%), Black (85%) and Asian American (80%) women.

Our survey respondents said they wanted to learn about long-term planning and other issues specific to their life stage, not just general money management principles. They also said they would prefer flexible programs that make it easy for busy people to participate, as well as those delivered by trusted agents in their communities, such as schools or community centers.

Right now, there aren’t many financial literacy programs specifically designed to address the needs of older women. But this research gives us a blueprint for future programs. Employers, financial service providers, community groups and national organizations all have an important role to play in empowering older women with the financial literacy skills they want and need.

Food Insecurity Increases In Los Angeles Due To Inflation And The End Of Pandemic Benefits

 

BY KATE STUZIN

LOS ANGELES (ANNENBERG MEDIA) - One in five people face food insecurity, according to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank’s 2022 annual report.

The Los Angeles Regional Food Bank’s 2022 annual report, released this month, reveals that one in five people in LA County face food insecurity, driven by high inflation and the end of pandemic-era aid.

In 2022, 110 pounds of food were distributed, down from 133 million pounds in 2021 and 174.6 million in 2020. CEO of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, Michael Flood attributes this decrease to the end of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farmers to Families Food Box Program in May 2021.

“Shortly after the pandemic hit with the shutdown of hotels, conventions, restaurants, schools, it led to a huge surplus of food and at the grower-producer level because their food had nowhere to go,” Flood said. “That pushed the numbers. 2020 was a record year in terms of food distribution because of USDA efforts in identifying surpluses and getting it into our food bank.”

Produce is the number one category the food bank supplies through its 600 partner agencies and food bank distribution, Flood said. He recalled inflation becoming a noticeable factor for the food bank at the start of 2022 and specifically addressed its impact on produce in the mission statement of the 2022 report.

“We changed our mission statement from ‘food insecurity’ to ‘nutrition insecurity,’” Flood said. “Nutrition security is broader, it’s calories and nutrients. People who struggle to meet their needs buy what they can afford, maybe more pasta, rice, and not from the produce section. In communities in South LA, there’s not access to a full-service grocery store, and the restaurant offerings skew more toward fast food. We need to talk about not just food, but what types of food.”

In October 2022, farm-level fruit prices surged by 11.5%, while farm-level vegetable prices soared by 22.4%, according to the USDA’s Food Price Outlook report.

“We’re very fortunate that the USC Dornsife has been tracking food insecurity and we work closely with the researchers there since the pandemic hit,” Flood said. “They’re determining ways to measure nutrition insecurity because it’s newer.”

The USC Institute for Food System Equity published their most recent study in September, revealing nearly one million households face food insecurity, a 6% increase from last year.

While battling inflation, people also dealt with the loss of pandemic benefits from the SNAP CalFresh program in March 2023. This led to an increased dependence on food bank support, with Flood noting an immediate 9% increase in people seeking assistance from them.

The food bank has seen an increase in monthly visitors, serving 870,000 people since the beginning of the year, up from 800,000 served in 2022. The food they serve relies on a combination of USDA donations and private contributions, and Flood says they only purchase a small fraction of their supply.

Low enrollment in CalFresh plays a role in increasing food insecurity. The Director of Marketing and Communications at the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, David May, works with a team to contact potentially eligible people for CalFresh.

“We know that the number of people in L.A. County who qualify for CalFresh is still higher than the number of people who are accessing CalFresh,” May said. “There’s people who would qualify and would be able to receive those benefits but may need help identifying how to secure access.”

Au Chung, a junior majoring in political science and public relations, began using CalFresh two years ago. Chung credits finding and applying to the program to their friends and wants to see the university take a more active role in the process.

“While I love that USC has a basic needs program, they weren’t very helpful for me in the application process for EBT,” Chung said. “Students are employed often during the school year and not during the breaks, so the school needs to provide resources to help students understand how the reporting for income goes during those periods because when you don’t have an income, you don’t qualify for EBT.”

Food insecurity is a huge issue for some USC students because of the combined high cost of living and tuition. Chung lives far from campus because of high rent prices nearby and still allocates half of his paycheck to rent. They compensate by using free food resources provided from campus organizations such as the LGBTQ+ center.

The Trojan Food Pantry, which opened in 2016, is another on-campus resource for students impacted by food insecurity. The pantry partners with the St. Francis Center to provide free groceries.

“There isn’t necessarily one of our partner agencies close to community colleges, so, we do a lot of mobile distributions at community colleges,” Flood said. “We’ve had discussions with USC’s food pantry but we have no formal connection. If there’s are anything on our side that could be helpful to the food pantry there, we’re happy to help.”

Angel Bonilla, a sophomore majoring in business and accounting volunteers weekly at the Trojan Food Pantry. Bonilla said food insecurity on campus peaked at the beginning of the semester and the pantry ordered much more food to compensate for the demand.

“The best way to address food insecurity is by taking it at a community level, just because even for people who are facing that need, it might be too much of an inconvenience to go if it’s far away. The USC Food Pantry makes it a lot easier for students to reach those resources. What I’d like to see is just more advertising. A lot of people don’t know about it.”

The pantry operates out of Tutor Campus Center 425A on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Between 100 and 200 students use the food pantry each day of operation, Bonilla said. Students can register here.

“I volunteered at the LA Food Bank a lot last semester,” Bonilla said. “I packed food into boxes, and you’re pretty much by yourself doing, like a factory line. Here at the food pantry it’s a lot more interpersonal. I get to see who I’m affecting.”

Volunteers can work shifts at the food bank Monday through Saturday. The food bank had 16,700 volunteers in 2022, a noticeable increase from 12,000 volunteers in 2021, which Flood attributes to a more “significant need” in terms of the work. Mary Connors took up a shift last Saturday and has volunteered at the food bank facility in South LA since 2009.

“You’re making a direct impact on someone that needs it,” Connors said. “Everybody needs food. Food isn’t a right or a privilege, it’s a necessity, and so many people don’t have access to it or can afford it.”

Kate Stuzin is a journalism major from Miami, Florida. She is interested in covering breaking news, politics, and entertainment stories.

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‘I See No Happy Ending’ − A Former National Security Leader On The Gaza Hostage Situation

THE CONVERSATION

Keren Shem, the mother of hostage Mia Shem, holds a photograph of her daughter as she speaks to the press in Tel Aviv on Oct. 17, 2023. Gil Cohen-MAGEN/AFP via Getty Images

BY GREGORY F. TREVERTON

PROFESSOR OF PRACTICE IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

DORNSIFE COLLEGE OF LETTERS, ARTS AND SCIENCES

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Hamas took more than 200 people hostage during its deadly rampage in Israeli border towns on Oct. 7, 2023. Among the hostages are children and the elderly. While four of them have been released, the fate of the rest is unknown, as Qatar serves as an intermediary in working to free the hostages. In this interview with Naomi Schalit, The Conversation U.S. senior politics and democracy editor, Gregory F. Treverton of USC Dornsife, a former chairman of the National Intelligence Council in the Obama administration, says most hostage-taking has specific goals. This one, says Treverton, “is basically an adjunct of warfare, and that makes it very different” – and very hard to solve.

How do people in your field think about hostage-taking? I would imagine that the feeling is, “Oh, my god, please let nothing like that happen.”

It’s an utter dilemma, because on the one hand you feel for the hostages. And as we’ve seen in the past, the Israelis have been prepared to – and did – release a thousand hostages to get one Israeli back.

On the other hand, when you do a deal to get hostages released, you’re only encouraging more hostage-taking. So you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. As a result, every government, including the United States, says, “We never deal with hostage-takers.” But of course, they all do – and they have to.

I think it’s one of the hardest parts of being in the national security business. You want to free the people – but you’re also going to get criticized. Every time President Biden has gotten somebody out of Russia, people have said, “Oh, he’s paid too high a price” or “He’s rewarded hostage-taking,” and to some extent, that’s true. You are basically rewarding the hostage-takers. But we still have to deal with them. We want to get our people out. And at some some point – as the Israelis have shown – they’re prepared to pay almost any price to get them back.

Israel released more than 1,000 prisoners in 2011 in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, whom Hamas captured and held for five years. This is more than 200 times the number of hostages, so how do you even think about that?

At least in my professional experience, this is without precedent. The closest parallel would be the 1976 Entebbe hijacking and hostage-taking by two Germans and two Palestinians on a flight from Tel Aviv to Paris. Hijackers held 103 Israeli hostages, once they released the 148 non-Israeli hostages. Hamas holds twice the number of hostages, and in very, very different circumstances. In Entebbe, the Israeli government knew where they were, they were in a single place – the airplane – which had been forced to land in Entebbe, Uganda, after taking off from Tel Aviv. And that’s where Israeli commandos were able to rescue the hostages.

In Gaza, we don’t know where they are. We know for sure they’re scattered throughout the tunnels, likely in lots of different small groups. Hamas will presumably then use them as shields if fighting begins on the ground. They might think that that would encourage the Israelis not to make a major attack – to keep Hamas from killing all the hostages. We know that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t keen on a major ground assault, and this really puts the onus on the Israelis for how the hostage situation ends.

When you think about the history of hostage negotiations, do you see something that has any relevance to what’s going on now?

It seems to me it’s a really different category. Even Entebbe was hostage-taking for some political aim – the hijackers wanted Israel to release a large number of prisoners who were Palestinian. A colleague of mine used to say that the point of terrorism was to do the least amount of violence with the most people watching it. But Entebbe was political theater, basically, and this is not political theater. This is basically an adjunct of warfare, and that makes it very different. It’s not the usual kind of tit for tat, with “How much am I willing to pay?” or “Can I take a hostage to get somebody else out?”

What does Israel’s heavy bombing of Gaza and the beginning of a ground invasion tell you about the government’s approach to the hostage situation?

It suggests either that they have a pretty good fix on where the hostages are located, which seems unlikely given the network of Hamas tunnels, or that they have decided they must proceed in any case and will try their best to safeguard and free hostages as they go. Given the Hamas practice of using civilians as human shields, the outcome is likely to be very ugly.

Where do you see this going?

I see no happy ending. I don’t think there’s a deal that Israel could conceivably make, given its own politics. Or that Hamas would accept. So it does seem to me that at some point there is going to be that ground attack and the hostages are going to be caught in the middle of it. I see almost no alternative, given what Israel has pledged – to destroy Hamas. The Biden administration maintains that Israel doesn’t really have a strategy. They have a desire, which is to destroy Hamas. But that’s not a strategy for dealing with the hostages or for Gaza after the attack.

USC Researchers To Leverage Ophthalmology AI For Improved Patient Care

USC Roski Eye Institute researchers are investigating how artificial intelligence may help automate clinical tasks and improve ophthalmology care.

BY SHANIA KENNEDY

June 23, 2023 - Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) Roski Eye Institute are exploring how the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in ophthalmology may help automate clinical tasks, allocate medical resources more efficiently, and improve care quality.

Ongoing healthcare workforce shortages are likely to continue in the United States over the next several years, and aging populations are expected to face significant provider shortages in the future. The press release indicates that this will be a particular challenge in ophthalmology, as these shortages can lead to patient care access challenges.

Successful use of AI in this area could help prevent and address these issues, spurring USC researchers to investigate these tools.

The research focuses on automating glaucoma detection and differentiating between serious and benign eye conditions using AI analysis of fundus photos.

The glaucoma detection initiative aims to use AI and fundus images to help automate the detection and referral of glaucoma patients from the Los Angeles County (LAC) Department of Health Services (DHS). The project seeks to improve access for LAC DHS’s underserved populations.

“Glaucoma is endemic among patients of LAC DHS, where it commonly leads to permanent, severe vision loss. The wait for a glaucoma evaluation typically takes more than six months, even when patients have severe disease,” explained Benjamin Xu, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of clinical ophthalmology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, who leads the research, in the press release. “This is a significant problem because valuable time is lost when these patients could have received sight-saving treatment.”

The initiative builds on Xu’s research to develop AI to help analyze optical coherence tomography (OCT) images and identify patients at high risk for glaucoma.

Xu indicated that OCT can provide high-quality images for glaucoma detection, but OCT analysis requires both time and specialized expertise, which clinicians may lack. Xu’s team hopes to develop AI tools that can simplify this process.

The researchers were recently awarded a two-year grant from LAC DHS and the Southern California Clinical and Translation Science Institute (SC CTSI), which will support the development of AI solutions for deployment in LAC DHS glaucoma screening clinics.

The second USC initiative to leverage AI in ophthalmology is looking at using algorithms to help distinguish between papilledema and pseudopapilledema.

Cleveland Clinic reports that papilledema is a serious condition that occurs when the optic discs in the eyes swell. Papilledema can be linked to neurological issues, such as brain abnormalities or tumors, and requires immediate treatment.

Conversely, pseudopapilledema is a benign condition, but telling the difference between the two can present a challenge for clinicians.

“Identifying the exact diagnosis typically requires longitudinal patient follow-ups and testing, including MRI scans and lumbar punctures,” said Melinda Chang, MD, an assistant professor of clinical ophthalmology specializing in pediatric neuro-ophthalmology at Keck. “We aim to have an answer earlier, and that’s where AI steps in.”

Chang’s team is collaborating with researchers from Boston Children’s Hospital, Stanford, Children's Hospital Los Angeles, and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in a multi-center study to provide fundus images for an AI tool designed to differentiate papilledema and pseudopapilledema.

The press release indicates that the model has outperformed humans in this task so far, with a current accuracy ranging between 70 and 80 percent and a sensitivity of up to 90 percent.

Moving forward, the researchers aim to expand the study to more institutions to gain additional data. The team also seeks to investigate the integration of imaging techniques like OCT to improve the model.

Across both initiatives, the researchers emphasized that ethical concerns and health equity considerations are key to the success of their research.

“At present, our AI algorithm is developed using data from Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, where the majority of patients are Latino,” said Xu. “While our algorithm may work effectively for Latino individuals, its performance may degrade when applied to individuals of other races and ethnicities. There should always be concern regarding potential biases that are latent due to unique attributes of data sources used to develop AI algorithms.”

“That is why we have established partnerships with other medical sites nationwide and aspire to collaborate with even more to ensure a more diverse sample,” Chang indicated.

These initiatives underscore a growing interest in using AI to improve ophthalmology.

In 2019, researchers at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering developed a machine learning (ML) algorithm that enhances the resolution of OCT.

The research team noted that OCT typically has better depth resolution than lateral resolution, resulting in blurred images of irregularly shaped structures. To address this, the researchers designed an ML tool capable of creating maps of the way light bends as it passes through a model.

The application of this approach to OCT has the potential to benefit oncology, cardiology, and ophthalmology.

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COVID-19’s Total Cost To The Economy In US Will Reach $14 Trillion By End Of 2023 – New Research

BY JAKUB HLAVKA AND ADAM ROSE

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.

The big idea

The economic toll of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. will reach US$14 trillion by the end of 2023, our team of economists, public policy researchers and other experts have estimated.

Putting a price tag on all the pain, suffering and upheaval Americans and people around the world have experienced because of COVID-19 is, of course, hard to do. More than 1.1 million people have died as a result of COVID-19 in the U.S., and many more have been hospitalized or lost loved ones. Based on data from the first 30 months of the pandemic, we forecast the scale of total economic losses over a four-year period, from January 2020 to December 2023.

To come up with our estimates, our team used economic modeling to approximate the revenue lost due to mandatory business closures at the beginning of the pandemic. We also used modeling to assess the economic blows from the many changes in personal behavior that continued long after the lockdown orders were lifted – such as avoiding restaurants, theaters and other crowded places.

Workplace absences, and sales lost due to the cessation of brick-and-mortar retail shopping, air travel and public gatherings, contributed the most. At the height of the pandemic, in the second quarter of 2020, our survey indicates that international and domestic airline travel fell by nearly 60%, indoor dining by 65% and in-store shopping by 43%.

We found that the three sectors that lost the most ground during the first 30 months of the pandemic were air travel, dining, and health and social services, which contracted by 57.5%, 26.5% and 29.16%, respectively.

These losses were offset to a degree by surges in online purchases, a series of large fiscal stimulus and economic relief packages and an unprecedented expansion of the number of Americans working from home – and thus were able to keep doing jobs that might otherwise have been cut.

From 2020 to 2023, the cumulative net economic output of the United States will amount to about $103 trillion. Without the pandemic, the total of GDP over those four years would have been $117 trillion – nearly 14% higher in inflation-adjusted 2020 dollars, according to our analysis.

We also simulated four different possible economic outcomes had the number of COVID-19 deaths been different because of either more or less successful public health strategies in the first 30 months of the pandemic.

The direct health expenses, driven mostly by hospitalization costs in these scenarios, would have totaled $20 billion in a best-case scenario in which 65,000 Americans would have died from January 2020 to June 2022. In the worst-case scenario, about 2 million would have died during that period, with $365 billion in direct health-related expenses.

Based on our findings, most economic losses were not due to these health care expenditures.

Why it matters

The COVID-19 pandemic’s economic consequences are unprecedented for the U.S. by any measure. The toll we estimate that it took on the nation’s gross domestic product is twice the size of that of the Great Recession of 2007-2009. It’s 20 times greater than the economic costs of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and 40 times greater than the toll of any other disaster to befall the U.S. in the 21st century to date.

Although the federal government has now lifted its COVID-19 Public Health Emergency declaration, the pandemic is still influencing the U.S. economy. The labor force participation rate, which stood at 62.6% in April 2023, has only recently neared the February 2020 level of 63.3%.

What is not known

We modeled only the pandemic’s standard economic effects. We didn’t estimate the vast array of economic costs tied to COVID-19, such as lost years of work after an early death or a severe case of long-COVID-19.

We also didn’t assess the costs due to the many ways that the disease has affected the physical and mental health of the U.S. population or the learning loss experienced by students.