A guide to being an ethical online investigator

AIs that read sentences can also spot virus mutations

Sponsored by Siemens Digital Industries Software The Download Your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology How to be an ethical online investigator 01.15.21 Good morning! And well done us for making it through another week of 2021. Today: if you want to investigate the Capitol riots, we explain how to do it ethically, and AI could help us to spot virus mutations. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day. We wish you an enjoyable, relaxing weekend. A guide to being an ethical online investigator   As rioters stormed Capitol Hill on January 6, Theo—like many Americans—watched, dumbfounded and in horror. Then he had an idea. “What if we went on social and started pulling these screenshots together and tried to go around and crowdsource [the rioters’] identities?” he remembers thinking. So Theo bought a burner phone, set up a fake email address, and created an Instagram account over a VPN: @homegrownterrorists. Within hours, and before the FBI had issued its plea for help to identify rioters, Theo (a pseudonym for the account holder, who asked to remain anonymous because of death threats he has received) had gained hundreds of thousands of followers as he furiously posted images and video. Thousands of people were commenting on and sharing the images, with the goal of identifying the perpetrators.  The assault on the Capitol, its aftermath, and the prospect of what federal authorities have warned could be a second wave of violence in the days leading up to Joe Biden’s inauguration have inspired a new army of everyday online investigators. People comb social media and archive posts, photos, and videos before they are deleted. Then they cross-reference those findings with open-sourced information to identify perpetrators and, they hope, bring them to justice. But this activity raises some complex ethical and practical issues. How can you, an average person, be an ethical digital activist? What counts as going too far? How can you keep yourself safe? How can you participate in a way that doesn’t put anyone in danger? Our senior reporter Tanya Basu has assembled some guidelines that amateur sleuthers should follow. AIs that read sentences can also spot virus mutations A big development: Natural-language processing (NLP) algorithms are now able to generate protein sequences and predict virus mutations, including key changes that help the coronavirus evade the immune system. The crucial insight making this possible is that many properties of biological systems can be interpreted in terms of words and sentences. The latest: In a study just published in Science, a team from MIT demonstrates how they used NLP to predict mutations that allow viruses to avoid being detected by antibodies in the human immune system, a process known as viral immune escape. The basic idea is that the interpretation of a virus by an immune system is analogous to the interpretation of a sentence by a human. The researchers use two different linguistic concepts: grammar and semantics (or meaning). The genetic or evolutionary fitness of a virus—characteristics such as how good it is at infecting a host—can be interpreted in terms of grammatical correctness. A successful, infectious virus is grammatically correct; an unsuccessful one is not. Why it matters: It’s very early but in theory, knowing what mutations might be coming could make it easier for hospitals and public health authorities to plan ahead. The team says it is now running models on new variants of the coronavirus. Read the full story. —Will Douglas Heaven 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.)   + It's Friday, so let's have some Beastie Boys.    + Some epic sea photography.    + Someone has made a video game of 2020. (I lasted seconds.)   + Forget bread, let's make some pasta. And who better to teach us than a nonna?   + If you like puzzles and want to take it up a notch, the gradient puzzle might be for you.    + Mountain bluebirds are beautiful.    + Think you need to be with your friends in person to play an escape game? Think again. Sponsor Message With trust in AI, manufacturers can build better Some people might not associate the word “trust” with artificial intelligence (AI).   Stefan Jockusch, Vice President of Strategy at Siemens Digital Industries Software, is not one of them. AI can improve production speed, take away tedious tasks from creative engineers, and make products customers want, explains Jockusch. He gives the example of Apple’s iPhones and its facial recognition software—technology that has been tested “millions and millions of times” and produced just a few failures.    Listen to the podcast here. The top ten must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Inside the online flight of the far-right They're being booted off mainstream platforms, posing huge challenges for the few smaller competitors. (OneZero $)   + The insurrection hiding in plain sight. (Foreign Affairs)   + Social media giants are facing scrutiny for inaction abroad. (NYT $)   + How Facebook incentivised and rewarded right-wing extremists. (NYT $)   + State capitols should be on high alert too. (NBC)   + The DC riot is the Sandy Hook of the disinformation crisis. (Wired $)   + How we fix America's (and the world's) debilitating information disorder. (WP $)   + Poland wants to make it illegal to censor social media accounts. (The Guardian)  2 What we know about covid-19's impact on taste and smell Months after the illness, some people still haven't had their senses fully restored. (Nature)   + The health system in Manaus has essentially collapsed. (ABC)   + Southern California's health system is on the brink. (Axios)   + The UK's plan to rely on mass testing to reopen schools has hit the buffers. (The Guardian)  3 Worried about your firm’s AI ethics? These startups are here to help. A new clutch of “responsible AI” ventures promise to help organizations monitor and fix their AI models. (TR)   + An algorithm is helping a community detect lead pipes. (Wired $)  4 The history of Wikipedia It turns 20 today, and this account comes directly from the people who were there right at the start. (OneZero $)   5 There's tons of demand for chips right now, and that's a problem No, not the kind you eat, obviously, though I bet there's plenty of demand for those too. (WSJ $)   6 Parler says it's coming back Its CEO believes he can just moderate content with an algorithm. Buddy, have I got bad news for you… (TechDirt)    + But, in the same interview, he admitted it might never happen. (Ars Technica)  7 US regulators have asked Tesla to recall 158,000 vehicles There are concerns over issues with the touch screens. (Reuters)   + The really crazy thing is that Tesla can't be compelled to comply… yet. (The Next Web)   + Is Tesla a car company, or a casino? (New Statesman)  8 The fight back against the honey fraudsters 🍯 Honey is being adulterated on a global scale. (Wired UK)   9 The man who kicked off the TikTok sea shanty craze He's a 26-year-old postal worker in Scotland and he's become famous overnight. (BBC)   + Why sea shanties are just so irresistible right now. (Wired $)   10 This woman consults the stars to figure out when to trade bitcoin 🔮 Frankly it's about as scientific a method as anyone else seems to have come up with. (Reuters) What happens when the internet of things converges at the speed of 5G with the reasoning of artificial intelligence? Find out at Future Compute, our virtual conference on intelligent computing. Register now. Quote of the day “All due respect, but haven’t we had enough time to figure out how to manage discourse without enabling violence? We’ve been fueling this fire for a long time and we shouldn’t be surprised that it’s now out of control.” —A Facebook employee responds to a plea for patience from an executive, the Wall Street Journal reports. Top image credit: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Please send space wine 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 Intelligent computing Join us virtually | February 10-11, 2021 Want to change how you receive these emails? You can *update your preferences or *unsubscribe from this list. 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