Use AI to help you understand science, not to ask who’s right or wrong. | Opinion

Truth tools

The world today is filled with misinformation, and everybody seems to claim that research supports their side. Especially for people without a background in science, it can feel impossible to know what to believe.

There are millions of studies on topics ranging from vaccines to education policy—far more than any person could read. Fortunately, a variety of free artificial intelligence tools can help. Resources such as Consensus and Elicit can identify relevant, reputable research and summarize where studies agree and disagree. SciSpace and even ChatGPT can translate dense papers into plain language, explaining terminology, statistics and study design. A 2024 study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association found that AI-generated summaries can improve our ability to find and understand scientific research.

These tools are not perfect, but when used correctly they are invaluable. Don’t ask AI who is right — ask what the evidence shows and where experts agree or disagree. The goal is not to outsource your thinking, but to better understand the research for yourself.

As a physician, I know decisions about health, education and public policy affect all of us. The antidote to misinformation is education and education should be accessible to everyone.

- Bryan McOmber, Kansas City

Value, merit

Americans for Prosperity, an organization founded and supported by members of the Wichita-based Koch family, contributed more than $3 million to the campaign of a conservative Republican running for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court last year. Elon Musk outdid it by contributing more than $20 million. Neither Charles Koch nor Musk are residents of Wisconsin, but both have business interests there. And both would likely be happy to have an obligated justice on the court to hear any cases that might involve them.

Americans for Prosperity now supports the amendment to change the process by which Kansas Supreme Court justices are selected. Another supporting organization, Kansas Policy Institute, also has ties to Koch Industries. Perhaps they are hoping to buy themselves obligated Kansas Supreme Court Justices.

Coincidentally, Ty Masterson, currently president of the state Senate, a Republican candidate for governor and another supporter of the amendment, is also employed as the director of GoCreate, a Koch Collaborative at Wichita State University, where he takes home a triple-digit salary. (July 12, 1A, “What exactly does Ty Masterson do at Koch-funded office? Rival calls it a ‘no-show job’”) Too much Koch for Kansas’ government?

On Aug. 4, reject money obligated-based justice for Kansas. Instead, let’s keep the proven merit-based justice we now have. Vote no on the amendment.

- Barbara Bowman, Mission

Whose world?

I was taught this song as a child:

“Jesus loves the little children/All the children of the world/Red and yellow, black and white/All are precious in his sight/Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

I wish the current administration felt the same way.

- Shirley Lewis, Overland Park

Get ahead

Last month, I traveled to Washington, D.C., with Stand With Crypto to meet Sen. Josh Hawley’s office about the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, also known as the CLARITY Act.

I made the trip as president of Stand With Crypto Missouri and as a builder working at the intersection of blockchain, artificial intelligence, healthcare data and digital asset infrastructure. Missouri has a real opportunity to lead in this next era of technology, but we cannot do that while American innovators are stuck in a regulatory gray zone.

The CLARITY Act would create workable rules for digital assets, giving regulators clearer lanes, builders clearer obligations, and consumers safer frameworks for participation.

This is not just about cryptocurrency. As artificial intelligence expands, we will need better ways to verify data authenticity, track provenance, protect ownership and create transparent records of how information is used. Ethical AI will require infrastructure that can prove where data came from, who had permission to use it and how value moves.

The House has passed the CLARITY Act. Now the Senate should act. Missouri should not be left reacting to the future. We should help build it.

- Ryan Wright, President, Stand With Crypto Missouri, Kansas City

We hope

We have hopes. We hope that our time remaining in this realm will be extended as long as we have purpose, as long as we have some peace and joy, and as long as our day-to-day existence has a tolerable amount of discomfort. We hope to be remembered, not for what we built or accumulated, but for what we gave, not for our successes, but for our meaningful significance, for what we have taught and the way we taught it, for our encouragements, and for our character.

We hope our family and friends will remember that we loved them and their memories of us will be sweet and tender. We hope that when we are missed, it will not be with a tear or a frown, but with a smile because of laughs shared, those times of mutual understanding, and those moments of silence where communication was magnificently clear.

Finally, we hope that when our time has come, we are ready and we will pass swiftly and without pain.

- Charles Stiles, Overland Park