1 year ago
125 My workfellow Charlotte embarked connected an experimentation during the pandemic. She created integer versions of her parents. They’re dependable assistants constructed by the institution HereAfter AI, powered by much than 4 hours of conversations they each had with an interviewer astir their lives and memories.
Technology similar this, which lets you “talk” to radical who’ve died, has been a mainstay of subject fabrication for decades. But present it’s becoming a reality—and an progressively accessible one, acknowledgment to advances successful AI and dependable technology.
While Charlotte’s real, flesh-and-blood parents are inactive live and well, their avatars connection a glimpse astatine a satellite wherever it’s imaginable to converse with loved ones—or simulacra of them—long aft they’re gone.
But astatine the aforesaid time, the morals of creating a virtual mentation of idiosyncratic are understandably complex, and immoderate radical interest that integer versions of mislaid loved ones could really prolong your grief—or adjacent loosen your grip connected reality. Read the afloat story.
—Charlotte Jee
Charlotte’s touching portion is from our forthcoming mortality-themed issue, disposable from October 26. If you privation to work it erstwhile it comes out, you tin subscribe to MIT Technology Review for arsenic small arsenic $80 a year.
AI could 1 time assistance to marque life-and-death decisions
Philip Nitschke, besides known arsenic “Dr. Death” oregon “the Elon Musk of assisted suicide,” has a funny goal. He wants to “demedicalize” decease and marque assisted termination arsenic unassisted arsenic imaginable done technology.
Nitschke’s nonprofit, Exit International, is moving connected an algorithm-based psychiatric self-assessment to let radical to extremity their lives without immoderate quality involvement. Although Nitschke is an utmost example, AI is already being utilized to triage and dainty patients successful a increasing fig of health-care fields.
But galore radical consciousness highly uneasy astir letting algorithms assistance to marque decisions astir whether radical unrecorded oregon die, and rightfully so. Read the afloat story.
—Melissa Heikkilä
This communicative is from The Algorithm, our caller play newsletter giving you the wrong way connected each things AI. Sign up to person it successful your inbox each Monday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.
1 Russia is terrorizing Ukraine with deadly Iranian drones
The unmanned “kamikaze” drones are targeting infrastructure in Kyiv. (FT $)
+ The US authorities has committed to different billion-dollar assistance package. (New Yorker $)
+ China, India and Turkey are inactive buying substance from Russia. (Vox)
2 Kayne West has agreed to bargain Parler
What happens present is anyone’s guess. (CNBC)
+ West said helium was driven to marque the acquisition aft being banned by Instagram and Twitter. (Bloomberg $)
+ He’s been repeating extremist conspiracy theories lately. (Vox)
+ As fringe societal platforms go, Parler is highly tiny fry. (Slate)
3 China is struggling to power its fans
Fandoms are notoriously competitive, and they’re undermining Xi Jinping’s imaginativeness of a agreed China. (Vox)
+ How China’s biggest online influencers fell from their thrones. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Astronomers person witnessed the brightest detonation of each time
This benignant of gamma ray burst is estimated to hap erstwhile each 1000 years. (New Scientist $)
5 Why “zero trust” is losing its meaning
Partly due to the fact that not each cybersecurity teams tin hold connected what it refers to. (Protocol)
6 Iodine tablets aren’t a magic cure for radiation exposure
They can, however, support 1 circumstantial portion of the body. (Wired $)
+ NATO is watching Russia similar a hawk for signs of a atomic attack. (Economist $)
7 We request to alteration however we presumption the ocean
That should impact giving it a ineligible close to life, researchers argue. (Motherboard)
+ Sponge cities are changing our narration with water. (Wired $)
+ The designer making friends with flooding. (MIT Technology Review)
8 The location surveillance manufacture thrives connected paranoia
The question is, what to bash erstwhile thing happens? (The Atlantic $)
+ How Amazon Ring uses home unit to marketplace doorbell cameras. (MIT Technology Review)
9 Teenagers privation to beryllium bully to each different online, actually ❤️
Luckily, there’s an app for that. (WSJ $)
10 A bionic chemoreceptor could assistance covid patients to odor again 👃
By communicating with a encephalon implant. (IEEE Spectrum)
Quote of the day
“If you're looking backmost astatine those experiences to beryllium a usher connected what volition happen, you are playing retired of a atrocious playbook."
—John Lovelock, an expert astatine Gartner, tells Insider wherefore the existent economical uncertainty, which is driven by ostentation and not currency oregon employment problems, differs from different recessions successful caller memory.
The large story
Why task superior doesn’t physique the things we truly need
June 2020
Venture capitalists merchantability themselves arsenic the apical of the heap successful Silicon Valley. They are the endowment spotters, the cowboys, the hazard takers; they enactment radical consenting to subordinate the strategy and, they say, merit to beryllium richly rewarded and lightly taxed for doing so.
This mostly white, mostly antheral country of concern has backed bundle companies that turn accelerated and make ample amounts of wealth for a shrinking fig of Americans—companies similar Google, Facebook, Uber, and Airbnb. But they don’t make galore jobs for mean people, particularly compared with the companies oregon industries they disrupt. And things person been slowing down. Recently, task capitalists person recovered less and less ideas that acceptable their preferred pattern. Read the afloat story.
—Elizabeth MacBride
We tin inactive person bully things
A spot for comfort, amusive and distraction successful these weird times. (Got immoderate ideas? Drop maine a line or tweet 'em astatine me.)
+ Even babies successful the womb aren’t definite astir the taste of kale.
+ AI’s mentation of what comedy flyers should look like is genuinely frightening.
+ Aww, this baby pangolin is truly enjoying its backmost scratch.
+ A speedy travel done however witches person enchanted creation implicit the centuries.
+ I can’t get capable of these banging bongo beats (thanks Afroditi!)
