Good morning! Today: our weird behavior is breaking AI models, Wuhan will test all 11 million residents after new coronavirus cases were discovered, and what we can learn from Iceland's covid app. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day.
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Our weird behavior during the pandemic is screwing with AI models
Changing tastes: When covid-19 hit, we started buying things we’d never bought before. The shift was sudden: the mainstays of Amazon’s top ten—phone cases, phone chargers, Lego—were knocked off the charts in just a few days. Toilet paper, face masks, and hand sanitizer replaced them.
The knock-on: While the ripple effects have been seen across retail supply chains, they have also affected artificial intelligence, causing hiccups for the algorithms that run behind the scenes in inventory management, fraud detection, marketing, and more. Machine-learning models trained on normal human behavior are now finding that normal has changed, and some are breaking as a result.
For example: One company that supplies sauces and condiments to retailers in India needed help fixing its automated inventory management system when bulk orders broke its predictive algorithms. Streaming companies are having problems with their recommendation algorithms thanks to an influx of content-hungry subscribers. And Amazon is the ultimate example: tweaks it has made to its algorithm to cope with the pandemic have produced unintended consequences around the world.
What it shows: The pandemic has revealed how intertwined our lives are with AI, exposing a delicate codependence in which changes to our behavior change how AI works, and changes to how AI works change our behavior. This is also a reminder that human involvement in automated systems remains key. Read the full story.
—Will Douglas Heaven
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Wuhan will test all 11 million residents after spotting its first new coronavirus cases
The news: Wuhan’s entire population of 11 million people will be tested for coronavirus after the city, where the pandemic started, discovered new infections for the first time since its lockdown was lifted. Each district in the city has been instructed to create a plan to test every resident within 10 days, according to a document from Wuhan’s anti-virus department.
The logic: Wuhan’s local government confirmed it found six locally transmitted cases over the weekend. The discovery broke a run of 35 consecutive days with no new confirmed cases in the city or the wider Hubei province since it lifted its lockdown on April 8.
Wider lessons: The vast, expensive attempt to flush out any further infections underscores just how anxious China’s government is to prevent a resurgence of the virus. As countries start to ease their lockdowns, they must contend with the very real threat of a second wave of coronavirus infections. South Korea, widely praised as one of the best responders to the pandemic, is now experiencing a new spate of infections after it lifted its lockdown and allowed people to go to bars and nightclubs.
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Nearly 40% of Icelanders are using a covid app—but manual tracing is still needed
The backstory: When Iceland got its first case of covid-19 on February 28, an entire apparatus sprang into action. It began rapidly rolling out public testing on a vast scale. It also quickly built a team of contact tracers. Within a few weeks, Icelanders had another high-tech tool at their disposal, too: a government-backed automated tracing app.
The app: Rakning C-19, which launched in early April, tracks users’ GPS data to compile a record of where they have been, allowing investigators—with permission—to look at whether those with a positive diagnosis are potentially spreading the disease. It gained traction quickly and now has the largest penetration rate of all contact trackers in the world, having been downloaded by 38% of Iceland’s population of 364,000.
Disappointment: Despite this early deployment and widespread use, one senior figure in the country’s covid-19 response says the real impact of Rakning C-19 has been small, compared with manual tracing techniques like phone calls. That perspective should be cautionary for other countries currently working on their own automated contact tracing services. Read the full story.
—Bobbie Johnson
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We can still have nice things
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The top ten must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Quarantine fatigue is legitimate
Instead of just shaming people, we should explain which activities are higher and lower risk. ( The Atlantic)
2 How much is your life worth? 💵
Not as much as you might hope, if our leaders’ actions are anything to go by. ( Wired $)
+ The rush to reopen will end badly, scientists warn. ( NYT $)
+ The real bailout is happening on GoFundMe. ( Jezebel)
3 Online voting is still a bad idea 🗳️
A few states have been toying with offering it to some voters this year. ( NPR)
+ Vote-by-mail is a safer option. ( TR)
4 Twitter has started labeling coronavirus misinformation
They have their work cut out. ( Reuters)
5 Elon Musk is literally asking to be arrested for reopening Tesla’s factory
Very much a modern-day Jesus (he imagines.) ( Vice)
6 We may never go back to offices 🏢
The first mass experiment in working from home has shown that we mostly don’t need them. ( Marker)
7 Infrared camera checks probably won’t slow the spread of covid-19
Even if they work as intended, they’ll still miss most people who have it. ( WP $)
8 These people fled coronavirus, and now they’re stuck in scenic limbo
Still trying to work out whether to feel jealous or pitying or annoyed. ( NYT $)
9 Bartering is back 🤝
In 2020, sourdough starter and hand sanitizer are replacing hard currency. ( WP $)
10 People are turning to augmented reality for pandemic playtime 🎉
Instagram filters are getting wilder and more popular. ( The Atlantic)
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“Take your mask off and relax. Breathe in some great buttery popcorn smells, watch a great movie, and just enjoy some time with your family.”
—Tim Handren, the chief executive of Santikos Entertainment, a small cinema chain in San Antonio, has a (potentially quite controversial) recorded message for customers, The Guardian reports.
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