Good morning! Today: introducing the latest issue of MIT Technology Review, all about long-term solutions to our problems. Also: we explain the DOJ case against Google, and a deepfake bot is being used to "undress" underage girls. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day. | Introducing: The long-term issue
One of humanity’s biggest failings is our inability to escape the present moment and look further ahead. This condition is neither permanent nor new, but it becomes especially acute during times of crisis, writes our editor-in-chief Gideon Lichfield. And it’s particularly extreme right now, especially for Americans, thanks to the covid-19 pandemic and the bitterly contested US election. The latest issue of MIT Technology Review is meant as an antidote. It looks at the kinds of technologies the world needs to tackle its most entrenched problems. It examines the things that may happen in the years, decades, centuries, and even millennia hence, and what needs to change now to make the future better than it looks from this precarious moment. And these changes aren’t the kinds of Band-Aid solutions the world has been applying for the past few years. Some of them will involve questioning long-held assumptions. Here are just some of the must-reads from the magazine: -
Richard Fisher on how humanity is stuck on short-term thinking. -
James Temple explains why California needs to scrap century-old fire management policies to fight its wildfires. -
Karen Hao learns from a top AI researcher about why the field is just coming to grips with the very real threats the technology can pose. -
Matthew Hutson explains why much of what we know is contingent on trusting other humans’ knowledge, and examines what happens if this is undermined. -
Tate Ryan-Mosley examines catastrophic threats to humanity and notes that most of them are, at least in theory, within our control. -
David W. Brown visits the lab where researchers are building a satellite that could knock an incoming asteroid off its collision course with Earth. -
Britta Lokting interviews an entrepreneur trying to help save the climate by composting human bodies instead of burying or cremating them. -
Wudan Yan looks at new attempts to tackle the problem of storing nuclear waste, some of which will stay radioactive for millions of years. -
Mallory Pickett talks to a researcher on the front lines of the hunt for the next pandemic. Read the full magazine and subscribe to get the next issue delivered to your door.
| | The DOJ says Google monopolizes search. Here’s how. The news: The US Department of Justice and attorneys general from 11 Republican-led states filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google yesterday, alleging that the company maintains an illegal monopoly on online search and advertising. The lawsuit follows a 16-month investigation, and repeated promises from President Trump to hold Big Tech to account. However, reports suggest the department was put under pressure by Attorney General William Barr to file the charges before the presidential election in two weeks’ time. What it’s all about: The case centers on Google’s tactics and market dominance in search. It currently receives 80% of all search queries in the United States, and the DOJ says it uses the tens of billions of dollars of annual profits from search advertising to unfairly suppress its competition. The DOJ is not explicitly looking to break up Google or impose fines. Rather, it’s asking for “structural relief as needed to cure any anticompetitive harm.” In layman’s terms, this means selling part of the business off. What next? The DOJ lawsuit itself will likely take years to make its way through the courts. A 1970s lawsuit against IBM took 13 years to complete, while a 1997 lawsuit against Microsoft took five. In neither case were the companies forced to break up. Read the full story. —Eileen Guo | A deepfake bot is being used to “undress” underage girls The news: Sensity AI (previously Deeptrace Labs), has found a free Telegram bot which lets people send a photo and receive a nude version of it back within minutes. As of July 2020, the bot had already been used to target and “strip” at least 100,000 women, the majority of whom likely had no idea. “Usually it’s young girls,” says Giorgio Patrini, the CEO and chief scientist of Sensity, who coauthored the report. How big is the problem? The deepfake bot launched in July 2019 and is connected to seven Telegram channels with a combined total of over 100,000 members, a number that has steadily grown over the last year. A poll of 7,200 users showed that roughly 70% of them are from Russia or other Russian-speaking countries. The victims, however, seem to come from a broader range of countries, including Argentina, Italy, Russia, and the US. The majority of them are private individuals whom the bot’s users say they know in real life or whom they found on Instagram. Read the full story. —Karen Hao | | The top ten must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 A third wave of the coronavirus is gaining steam across the US Cases are up, more tests are coming back positive, and hospitalizations are rising. ( Axios) + Ireland has become the first European country to impose a second national lockdown. ( NYT $) + Let’s look at the latest science around covid-19 and surfaces. ( Wired $) + Obesity could affect vaccine efficacy. ( Nature) + The pandemic will have aftershocks. ( Axios) 2 CIA officers claim they’re still being targeted by a mysterious Russian weapon “Havana Syndrome” has been turning up in different locations around the world, including on US soil. ( GQ) 3 Inside the information war on Black voters Black communities are being flooded with disinformation trying to dissuade them from voting, but organizers are fighting back. ( TR) + How we can prepare for the very real risk of far-right, armed extremists trying to interfere with the election. ( Wired $) + Democratic voters in three swing states have received threatening emails. ( WP $) + China will increasingly become a source of disinformation in the US, say intelligence experts. ( NBC) 4 How Google took over our lives You probably spend hours every single day interacting with its products. ( NYT $) + Google is telling employees to keep their heads down as it fights the DOJ antitrust case. ( CNBC) + Why the lawsuit is such an anticlimax. ( Wired $) 5 Researchers can now take virtual walks through human cells The VR tool is already being used to understand immune responses, and how proteins mis-fold in disease. ( IEEE Spectrum) 6 Video games can be life-saving for veterans 🎮 Gaming can be highly therapeutic for people struggling with PTSD. ( Wired $) + Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a huge hit on Twitch yesterday. ( The Verge) 7 Virtual power plants could be the future for energy generation They can solve some of the big problems with aging electricity grids. ( The Verge) 8 Would you like “milk” with that Impossible burger? 🥛 The company is trying to expand into the lucrative dairy replacement market. ( TR) 9 Screens before bed are fine for kids—just keep it chilled What’s on the screen matters more than the quantity of time spent using it. ( WSJ $) 10 Charities face a dilemma after cybercriminals donate $10,000 It’s illegal to take the money, but there’s also no way to give it back. ( The Guardian) | | “I have pressed pause on my life, and although I’m dying to resume it, I don’t even know if there’s a play button there any more.” —Aadam Patel, a 21-year-old who lives in West Yorkshire in the UK, tells The Guardian how the pandemic has affected him. | | | | | |
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