An interview with a virus-hunter

The true dangers of AI are closer than we think

Sponsored by Deloitte The Download Your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology Hunting for the next pandemic 11.17.20 Good morning! Today: how to spot the next virus, and why the real danger of AI isn't what you think. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day. An interview with a virus-hunter   In 2009, two farmers checked in to the Heartland hospital in Missouri within days of each other with fever, nausea, diarrhea, and rapidly declining white blood cell counts. Doctors sent their blood samples to the Centers for Disease Control, which discovered that both farmers had contracted a previously unknown virus from a tick bite. The CDC named it the Heartland virus. Five years later, a lab technician testing samples for a suspected Heartland case identified another novel virus, dubbed Bourbon.  Before Heartland and Bourbon, only 14 new tick-borne pathogens had been spotted since 1900. The new discoveries support suspicions that zoonotic pathogens—viruses or bacteria that leap from animals to humans, as SARS-CoV-2 is believed to have done—are more numerous than we realized.   Can researchers who spot a new virus actually do anything to keep it from getting out of control? Mallory Pickett spoke with Erin J. Staples, a CDC epidemiologist who led the response to Heartland and created a tracking registry that has documented 50 infections so far. Read the full interview. The two top stories in today’s newsletter are from the latest issue of MIT Technology Review, all about our need to think longer-term. Read the full magazine and subscribe to get the next issue delivered to your door. The true dangers of AI are closer than we think As long as humans have built machines, we’ve feared the day they could destroy us. Stephen Hawking famously warned that AI could spell an end to civilization. But to many AI researchers, these conversations feel unmoored. It’s not that they don’t fear AI running amok—it’s that they see it already happening, just not in the ways most people would expect.  AI is now screening job candidates, diagnosing disease, and identifying criminal suspects. But instead of making these decisions more efficient or fair, it’s often perpetuating the biases of the humans on whose decisions it was trained.  William Isaac is a senior research scientist on the ethics and society team at DeepMind, an AI startup that Google acquired in 2014. He also cochairs the Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency conference—the premier annual gathering of AI experts, social scientists, and lawyers working in this area. Our AI senior reporter Karen Hao asked him about the current and potential challenges facing AI development—as well as the solutions. Read the full interview. Cybersecurity has gone from a niche concern to one of the top threats nation-states, companies and citizens face. If you want to learn about the latest developments in the field, and how to equip yourself to defend against them, you should sign up for CyberSecure 2020, our virtual conference due to be held on December 2-3. You’ll hear from top researchers, security execs, and (of course) some of the MIT Technology Review’s top journalists.  We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet 'em at me.)   + Who can resist a skateboarding dog?!   + A Tolkien professor answers all the burning questions.    + This woman, sorry, I mean genius, has been pretending to conduct the opening credits to Housewives.    + Dive into some classic food shows from legends like Anthony Bourdain and Keith Floyd.   + People on TikTok are creating a musical version of Ratatouille.    + Ever wondered how soy sauce is made?   + A Belgian racing pigeon set a world record.   + “Sound walks” can transport you to another place and time, even if you’re near home. Sponsor Message Bridging the ethics gap surrounding AI Want to sustain the trust of employees and customers? You should address six critical AI dimensions to help safeguard AI ethics and build a Trustworthy AI™ strategy. These six dimensions can helps identify issue related to AI bias and ethics so you can address them at every stage of the AI lifecycle. Take a closer look at the framework. The top ten must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Why the US probably won’t ever go into lockdown  The hope is that more targeted measures could get the pandemic under control—if they’re adopted and followed. (Elemental)   + Americans should hunker down right now regardless. (The Atlantic)   + What do curfews achieve? (Slate)   + Sweden has banned gatherings of more than eight people. (The Local)   + Lawsuits in Spain say a focus on only covid means cancer cases are going undiagnosed. (NYT $)    + Biden has warned “more people will die” if the transition process doesn’t get underway. (AP)  2 It could be 2024 before everyone is vaccinated 💉 Here comes that “vaccine nationalism” we’ve been warned about. (Axios)   + Every country wants a covid-19 vaccine. Who will get it first? (TR)   + A reminder of how far along the process all the different vaccines are. (NYT $)   + How do we convince everyone to take them? (New Scientist $)  3 Four astronauts arrived at the International Space Station yesterday 👨‍🚀 They’ll be there until spring next year. Slightly jealous. (NBC)   + They took Baby Yoda with them. (The Verge)  4 What went wrong with rapid testing in the US The government bet big on relatively unproven products. (ProPublica)    + Rapid covid tests can work—if you avoid making the White House’s mistakes. (TR)  5 Facebook knows fact-checking Trump doesn’t work Internal data shows that labels on his posts only decrease shares by about 8%. (Buzzfeed)   + Zuckerberg and Dorsey will be questioned by the Senate Judiciary Committee today. (NYT $)   + Twitter has hired famous hacker “Mudge” to be its head of security. (Reuters)   6 Ordinary apps are selling people’s location data to the US military The most popular was a Muslim prayer and Quran app with more than 98 million downloads worldwide. (Vice)   7 Jeff Bezos announced the first beneficiaries of his $10 billion climate fund Many of them are advocacy groups. (The Verge)   + Another reason why geoengineering may not work. (Earther)  8 Airbnb refunded $1 billion in bookings this year Ouch. (Quartz)   9 History suggests things in the US could (and probably will) get worse Cool, cool, cool. Cool. (The Atlantic)   10 Will you ever be able to share dreams? 💭 I’m not sure anyone wants to see mine either way, to be honest. (Gizmodo) Not an expert? Not a problem.  Our team is full of those. Subscribe to MIT Technology Review today for an insightful look into technology for the future without getting bogged down by the jargon. Quote of the day “I think it is the single biggest threat to our democracy.” —Barack Obama gives his verdict on the internet and social media to The Atlantic. Top image credit: REBECCA STUMPF Please send ratatouille to hi@technologyreview.com. Follow me on Twitter at @charlottejee. Thanks for reading! —Charlotte Was this newsletter forwarded to you, and you'd like to see more? Sign up for free Lead a cyber-resilient organization Join us virtually | December 2-3, 2020 Follow us: MIT Technology Review One Main Street Cambridge, MA 02142

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