The people who lost everything in Asia’s biggest climate migration

An AI helps you summarize the latest in AI  

Sponsored by Deloitte The Download Your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology Climate migration is already here 11.19.20 Good morning! Today: the people who stand to lose everything due to climate change, an AI that summarizes the latest AI research, and citizens are using facial recognition on the police. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day. The people who lost everything in Asia’s biggest climate migration   On May 20, Super Cyclone Amphan was expected to make landfall in the Indian state of West Bengal. That morning, as the wind picked up, Mitali Mondol and her husband, Animesh, fled their house, leaving behind everything they owned. The Mondols live in Gosaba, an island in the Sundarbans, an archipelago that is home to the world’s largest mangrove forest. They knew of only one flood shelter. It was far away. As they reached higher ground, they ducked into a restaurant. The restaurant quickly filled up with villagers who watched as the waves climbed to 15 feet high. Then the water broke the embankments. Trees fell, power lines collapsed, and roads vanished. The region has witnessed 15 major cyclones in recent years, of which Amphan was the latest and biggest. Under several realistic scenarios for sea-level rise, researchers predict that—damaging as Amphan was—the impact of a similar future storm on the Indian side of the Sundarbans might be twice as bad. Mitali Mondol and her husband survived unharmed, but the situation has left the newly married couple deeply anxious for their future. “If there’s another cyclone like Amphan,” Mitali Mondol says. “We will die. All of us in the Sundarbans will die.” Read the full story. —Sonia Faleiro (This story is for subscribers-only. A digital subscription is just $50 a year—sign up here.) An AI helps you summarize the latest in AI The news: A new AI model for summarizing scientific literature can now assist researchers in wading through and identifying the latest cutting-edge papers they want to read. The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence has rolled out the model onto its flagship product, Semantic Scholar, an AI-powered scientific paper search engine. It provides a one-sentence tl;dr (too long; didn’t read) summary under every computer science paper. How they did it: The researchers first trained a neural network on a generic corpus of text to establish its baseline familiarity with the English language. This process is known as “pre-training” and is part of what makes transformers so powerful. They then fine-tuned the model—in other words, trained it further—on the specific task of summarization.  Squeezed: While many other research efforts have tackled the task of summarization, this one stands out for the level of compression it can achieve. The scientific papers included in the SciTldr dataset average 5,000 words. Their one-sentence summaries average 21. This means each paper is compressed on average to 238 times its size. Read the full story. —Karen Hao Podcast: Citizens are turning face recognition on unidentified police The latest series of In Machines We Trust, our brilliant AI podcast, is all about facial recognition. In part one of this series, we explore the unexpected ways the technology is being used, including how it is being turned on the police. You can subscribe on Spotify, Apple, and all your usual podcast places.  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.)   + The longest walk by a tiger ever recorded in India: about 3,000 km (your move, Proclaimers).   + A collection of colorful taxi ceilings in Mumbai.    + We all do this on Zoom. Let’s be honest.   + The UK is in for a record-breaking baby boom of grey seal pups. Sponsor Message Harnessing the full potential and value of AI while managing its unique risks Whether you are starting with a clean slate and approaching AI from the top down or starting with your existing AI initiatives and building up from there, all four dimensions must be addressed. Crafting and executing an AI strategy that considers these four dimensions will help your company scale up quickly to capture the full benefits of AI without getting bitten by AI’s unique risks. Read the full article. The top ten must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 The Oxford vaccine has reported positive preliminary results 💉 Early evidence suggests it provokes a strong immune response in adults of all ages. (The Guardian)   + What it will take to get a vaccine to everyone. (New Scientist $)   + Trump is holding up vaccine planning. (The Verge)  2 The LAPD has banned use of Clearview AI facial recognition software Officers can now only use a system that relies on suspect booking images. (Buzzfeed)   + Students at the University of Miami say campus police used facial recognition to identify protesters. (Wired $)  3 A grim milestone in the US: 250,000 dead Records of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths keep being broken. (Reuters)   + Want to do your bit to help? Download a contact tracing app. (WP $)   + How we can get this under control, according to one of Biden’s advisers. (New Yorker $)   + The US has been doomed by the lack of coordinated, national response. (NYT $)   + Researchers are divided over how much asymptomatic carriers are driving infections. (Nature)   + How Finland and Norway are keeping the virus at bay (without lockdowns). (WSJ $)   + How China controlled the pandemic. (Wired UK)   + New York is closing its schools again. (NYT $)  4 How to have a fully remote Thanksgiving This isn’t what anyone wants. But it’s looking like the least risky option. (NYT $)   + There isn’t a single state in the US right now where indoor gatherings can be said to be safe. (Axios)   + You probably can catch the coronavirus on an airplane. (Wired $)  5 Facebook moderators say they're being forced back into the office Zuckerberg’s hope that AI could solve its problems still seems to be a pipe dream. (BBC)   6 Warehouse robots have been upgraded to pack 350 times faster 🤖 The software’s capabilities might be racing ahead of the hardware’s constraints, though. (New Scientist $)   + Cleaning robots are showing up for duty in the office. (The Verge)  7 Boeing’s 737 Max has been cleared to fly again The FAA demanded a series of changes to the software that led to two fatal crashes within five months. (Ars Technica)   + Families of the victims still have questions. (BBC)  8 AI researchers claim to have developed a “sarcasm detector” Sure, sure. (VentureBeat)   9 Meet Gladys West, who helped invent GPS The fact she personally still uses paper maps somehow makes this even more brilliant. (The Guardian)   10 Staring at (unachievable) potential new homes online? Me too 🏡 We need escapism more than ever right now. (NYT $) 2 weeks until CyberSecure, our inaugural event on the business of cyber risk. This two-day event for executives includes sessions on how to prevent and respond to ransomware, stand up to nation-state hackers, and build a cyber-resilient organization. Purchase your ticket today. Quote of the day “The only reason that we don’t have these out in massive numbers is that the federal government hasn’t prioritized it in any way.” —Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina tells The Atlantic that rapid at-home covid-19 tests could already have been widely available, if they only had backing from the top. Top image credit: Sushavan Nandy Please send colorful ceilings 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 Don't settle for half the story. Subscribe to MIT Technology Review for access to subscriber-only content and more. Follow us: MIT Technology Review One Main Street Cambridge, MA 02142 Want to change how you receive these emails? You can *update your preferences or *unsubscribe from this list.  Subscription Information This email was sent to Webmaster220 Bible Study Blog   *the blog owner has deleted the hyperlink intentionally