SpaceX’s Starship has finally stuck the landing on its third flight

"We'll never have true AI without first understanding the brain" 

Sponsored by VMware The Download Your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology Third time lucky 03.04.21 Good morning! Today: SpaceX's Starship has finally landed safely after a test flight, a neuroscientist says we'll never reach true AI without understanding the brain first, and why digital contact tracing hasn't fully delivered. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day. SpaceX’s Starship has finally stuck the landing on its third flight   The news: SpaceX’s Starship pulled off a successful high-altitude flight yesterday—its third in a row. Unlike the first two missions, the spacecraft stuck the landing. Then, as in the last two, the spacecraft blew up. The details: The spacecraft flew about 10 kilometers into the air before descending safely to Earth. About 10 minutes later, the spacecraft exploded, from what appears to have been a methane leak. Still, the actual objectives of the mission were met. Why it matters: This is the first time Starship has landed safely after a high-altitude flight. This is the vehicle that SpaceX wants to use to one day send astronauts to the moon, Mars, and other destinations beyond Earth’s orbit. Read the full story. —Neel V. Patel “We’ll never have true AI without first understanding the brain” Most people in AI don’t care too much about the details, says Jeff Hawkins, a neuroscientist and tech entrepreneur. He wants to change that. Hawkins has straddled the two worlds of neuroscience and AI for nearly 40 years. Today he runs Numenta, a neuroscience research company based in Silicon Valley. There he and his team study the neocortex, the part of the brain responsible for everything we associate with intelligence. After a string of breakthroughs in the last few years, Numenta changed its focus from brains to AI, applying what it has learned about biological intelligence to machines. Our senior AI editor Will Douglas Heaven had a long chat with Hawkins on Zoom about what his research into human brains means for machine intelligence. Here’s what he had to say. Digital contact tracing brought tech rivals together while the pandemic kept us apart If we’ve learned anything from covid-19, it’s the extent to which our lives are enmeshed with those of the people around us. We interact constantly, spreading our germs and picking up theirs. That’s why exposure notifications—using your phone to tell you if you’ve crossed paths with an infected person—seemed so promising.  Technology offered a way to automate time-honored contact tracing efforts in which public health investigators ask patients to retrace their footsteps in order to deduce where they got infected. That idea sparked a remarkable wave of development and cooperation. Some programmers had systems up and running in weeks. Meanwhile Apple and Google, rivals in almost every usual respect, collaborated on a system that worked on smartphones and kept health data anonymous and private. By January, MIT Technology Review was tracking 77 exposure notification apps being used by governments around the world.  Like many things meant to slow the pandemic, however, digital contact tracing hasn’t yielded the lifesaving results we needed. In fact, it barely made a dent. Here’s why. —Lindsay Muscato This story is for subscribers only. It's from the latest issue of MIT Technology Review, which is all about progress. Read the full magazine, and why not subscribe so you get future issues, too? It's just $50 a year. 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.)   + You can cook more exciting dishes in your microwave than you might imagine.    + Make some flowcharts.    + What a stunning starling.    + A 15th century Ming dynasty bowl was unearthed at a yard sale.   + Teaching a baby to sing.   + The case for getting a wildlife camera. (NYT $) Sponsor Message Digital acceleration in the time of coronavirus: Europe European businesses reinvented themselves amid pandemic-driven disruption, reshuffling tech priorities and pursuing new opportunities. Learn how the pandemic sped up technology change. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 There's a global divide over whether to eliminate or suppress covid-19 And really, we need to all be on the same page for elimination to work. (The Guardian)   + Scientists say Brazil's covid crisis is a warning to the whole world. (NYT $)   + These people couldn't leave the house for years. Then the pandemic trapped them back in again. (Wired UK)   + Technology has become a major barrier for people getting the vaccine in the US. (CNET)   + Pharmacists are sick of people calling over and over. (Slate)  2 Google is going to stop selling ads based on your browsing history But there's a catch. It's about to start testing a new way to track you on your device instead. (WSJ $)   + It is a big shake-up for advertisers. (WSJ $)   + Arizona has passed a bill forcing Apple and Google to stop taking such a big cut from apps on their stores. (The Verge)  3 The "exit counselors" trying to pull Americans out of conspiracyland These people are heroes. (NPR)   + The House of Representatives isn't sitting today, after police warned of another possible attack on the Capitol. (NPR)  4 Facebook is lifting its US political ad ban today It was always a temporary measure for the November election. (Axios)   + It is regularly impossible to work out who is really funding political ads online. (WP $)   + The most engaged-with political news on Facebook is far-right misinformation. (Protocol)   + Spanish language misinformation is flourishing on Facebook. (The Guardian)   + Hongkongers are quitting Facebook. (Rest of World)   + Parts of Brazil's Amazon rainforest are being illegally sold on Facebook. (BBC)  5 Inside China's plan for 100% surveillance The "Sharp Eyes" program essentially turns neighbors into snooping agents of the state. (OneZero $)   6 The Kings of Leon is releasing its new album as an NFT 🎧 But WHY. (Rolling Stone)   + What NFTs are, and why they are unequivocally awful. (from artist and programmer Everest Pipkin)  7 Fancy an unpaid job moderating Twitter? Yet another initiative that doesn't fix the platform's problems... while introducing new ones. (The Atlantic)   + Wikipedia has seen a spike in editing activity during the pandemic. (New Scientist $)   + Twitter's Clubhouse clone is now open to Android users. (The Verge)  8 The latest tech company perk: work from home forever 🏠 The people have spoken, and they do not want to go back to normal. (Bloomberg $)   9 Cuttlefish can pass the marshmallow test of self-control Smart. (The Guardian)   + Zebrafish brains light up when they listen to MC Hammer. (The Guardian)  10 The long, unsatisfying history of space hotels 👩‍🚀 We've been told they're coming for a good six decades now. (Gizmodo) Don't settle for half the story. MIT Technology Review delivers insights on today's technologies and their impact upon our collective future through a trustworthy lens you won't find anywhere else. Get unlimited access when you subscribe today. Quote of the day “What’s the point in sorting the pandemic out in Europe or the United States, if Brazil continues to be a breeding ground for this virus?” —Miguel Nicolelis, a Duke University neuroscientist who is tracking the crisis from Brazil, warns that the country's lax approach to covid-19 threatens the entire world, The Guardian reports.  Top image credit: SPACEX Please send starlings 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 The age of implementation Join us virtually | March 23–25, 2021 Follow us: MIT Technology Review One Main Street Cambridge, MA 02142

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