Review by Cory Doctorow
https://doctorow.medium.com/james-bridles-ways-of-being-e1a43bf6d013

It's that state of mind that occurs for a week or two after you've been to a science fiction convention, like this past weekend's Readercon, and news stories strike you as even more ominously dystopian than usual which, after 2020, is saying a lot. But, seriously, creating your own doppleganger, you know that never goes well, especially when you compare them to cute harmless puppies. I mean, WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?!

Deepfakes Are Now Making Business Pitches
TOM SIMONITE
08.16.2021 07:00 AM
https://www.wired.com/story/deepfakes-making-business-pitches/

The clips are presented openly as synthetic, not as real videos intended to fool viewers. Reeder says they have proven to be an effective way to liven up otherwise routine interactions with clients. “It’s like bringing a puppy on camera,” he says. “They warm up to it.”

New corporate tools require new lingo: EY calls these its virtual doubles ARIs, for artificial reality identity, instead of deepfakes. Whatever you call them, they’re the latest example of the commercialization of AI-generated imagery and audio,
https://www.wired.com/story/covid-drives-real-businesses-deepfake-technology/
a technical concept that first came to broad public notice in 2017 when synthetic and pornographic clips of Hollywood actors began to circulate online. Deepfakes have steadily gotten more convincing, commercial, and
easier to make
https://www.wired.com/story/cheap-easy-deepfakes-closer-real-thing/
since.

Kes: The author of the article explains how they taught the Ai to recognize shipwrecks--very cool!

https://www.econotimes.com/AI-spots-shipwrecks-from-the-ocean-surface--and-even-from-the-air-1613446

Calming Computer Jitters: Help for Seniors Who Aren’t Tech-Savvy
By Judith Graham

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/seniors-tech-help-getting-online/2021/07/09/d13fe374-d90c-11eb-8fb8-aea56b785b00_story.html

Six months ago, Cindy Sanders, 68, bought a computer so she could learn how to email and have videoconference chats with her great-grandchildren.

It’s still sitting in a box, unopened.

“I didn’t know how to set it up or how to get help,” said Sanders, who lives in Philadelphia and has been careful during the pandemic.

Like Sanders, millions of older adults are newly motivated to get online and participate in digital offerings after being shut inside, hoping to avoid the coronavirus, for more than a year. But many need assistance and aren’t sure where to get it.

A survey from AARP,
https://www.aarp.org/research/topics/technology/info-2021/2021-technology-trends-older-americans.html
conducted in September and October, highlights the quandary.

It found that older adults boosted technology purchases during the pandemic but more than half (54 percent) said they needed a better grasp of the devices they had acquired. Nearly 4 in 10 (37 percent) admitted they weren’t confident about using these technologies.
( continued below cut )

Posted to Slate
BY AMBER M. HAMILTON
JULY 07, 20211:55 PM

Algorithmic bias is a function of who has a seat at the table.Benjamin Child
In late June, the MIT Technology Review reported on the ways that some of the world’s largest job search sites—including LinkedIn, Monster, and ZipRecruiter—
have attempted to eliminate bias in their artificial intelligence job-interview software.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/23/1026825/linkedin-ai-bias-ziprecruiter-monster-artificial-intelligence/
In late June, the MIT Technology Review reported on the ways that some of the world’s largest job search sites—including LinkedIn, Monster, and ZipRecruiter—have attempted to eliminate bias in their artificial intelligence job-interview software.
These remedies came after incidents in which A.I. video-interviewing software was found to
discriminate against people with disabilities that affect facial expression
https://benetech.org/about/resources/expanding-employment-success-for-people-with-disabilities-2/
and
exhibit bias against candidates identified as women.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight/amazon-scraps-secret-ai-recruiting-tool-that-showed-bias-against-women-idUSKCN1MK08G
When artificial intelligence software produces differential and unequal results for marginalized groups along lines such as
race,
https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sentencing
gender,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carmenniethammer/2020/03/02/ai-bias-could-put-womens-lives-at-riska-challenge-for-regulators/?sh=16920ec0534f
and
socioeconomic status,
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/04/books/review/automating-inequality-virginia-eubanks.html
Silicon Valley rushes to acknowledge the errors, apply technical fixes, and apologize for the differential outcomes. We saw this when
Twitter apologized after its image-cropping algorithm was shown to automatically focus on white faces over Black ones
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/sep/21/twitter-apologises-for-racist-image-cropping-algorithm
and when
TikTok expressed contrition for a technical glitch that suppressed the Black Lives Matter hashtag.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/02/tiktok-blacklivesmatter-censorship.html
They claim that these incidents are unintentional moments of unconscious bias or bad training data spilling over into an algorithm—that the bias is a bug, not a feature.

But the fact that these incidents continue to occur across products and companies suggests that discrimination against marginalized groups is actually central to the functioning of technology. It’s time that we see the development of discriminatory technological products as an intentional act done by

the largely white, male executives of Silicon Valley
https://revealnews.org/article/heres-the-clearest-picture-of-silicon-valleys-diversity-yet/
to uphold the systems of racism, misogyny, ability, class and other axis of oppression that privilege their interests and create extraordinary profits for their companies. And though these technologies are made to appear benevolent and harmless, they are instead emblematic of what Ruha Benjamin, professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and the author of Race After Technology,
terms “The New Jim Code
“: new technologies that reproduce existing inequities while appearing more progressive than the discriminatory systems of a previous era.

....It’s time for us to reject the narrative that Big Tech sells—that incidents of algorithmic bias are a result of using unintentionally biased training data or unconscious bias. Instead, we should view these companies in the same way that we view education and the criminal justice system: as institutions that uphold and reinforce structural inequities regardless of good intentions or behaviors of the individuals within those organizations. Moving away from viewing algorithmic bias as accidental allows us to implicate the coders, the engineers, the executives, and CEOs in producing technological systems that are
less likely to refer Black patients for care,
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03228-6
that may cause disproportionate harm to disabled people,
https://slate.com/technology/2020/02/algorithmic-bias-people-with-disabilities.html
and
discriminate against women in the workforce.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight/amazon-scraps-secret-ai-recruiting-tool-that-showed-bias-against-women-idUSKCN1MK08G
When we see algorithmic bias as a part of a larger structure, we get to imagine new solutions to the harms caused by algorithms created by tech companies, apply social pressure to force the individuals within these institutions to behave differently, and create a new future in which technology isn’t inevitable, but is instead equitable and responsive to our social realities.

Read the rest of the article at
https://slate.com/technology/2021/07/silicon-valley-algorithmic-bias-structural-racism.html#main

from
https://scitechdaily.com/new-lab-on-a-chip-could-enable-fast-easy-testing-for-colds-flu-utis-and-covid-19-at-home/

The chip, developed at Imperial College London and known as TriSilix, is a ‘micro laboratory’ which performs a miniature version of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) on the spot. PCR is the gold-standard test for detecting viruses and bacteria in biological samples such as bodily fluids, feces, or environmental samples.

Although PCR is usually performed in a laboratory, which means test results aren’t immediately available, this new lab-on-a-chip can process and present results in a matter of minutes.

The chip is made from silicon, the same material that is used to make electronic chips. Silicon itself is cheap, however, it is expensive to process into chips which requires massive, ‘extremely clean’ factories otherwise known as cleanrooms. To make the new lab-on-chip, the researchers developed a series of methods to produce the chips in a standard laboratory, cutting the costs and time they take to fabricate, potentially allowing them to be produced anywhere in the world.

Lead researcher Dr. Firat Guder of Imperial’s Department of Bioengineering said: “Rather than sending swabs to the lab or going to a clinic, the lab could come to you on a fingernail-sized chip. You would use the test much like how people with diabetes use blood sugar tests, by providing a sample and waiting for results — except this time it’s for infectious diseases.”

The paper is published today (December 2, 2020) in Nature Communications.

The new mask, called the TEAL respirator (“transparent, elastomeric, adaptable, long-lasting”), attempts to solve those problems. The main portion of the mask can be safely sterilized using rubbing alcohol, a microwave, or multiple other methods, while smaller filters are swapped out. The most recent study showed, among other things, that can be reused 100 times. It’s clear, so patients who can’t hear well can follow a doctor’s lips. It’s made of silicone that conforms comfortably to the face. It’s breathable. In a study with healthcare workers at Brigham and Massachusetts General Hospital, most workers preferred it; in fit tests, it also fit different face shapes well.
Sensors in the filters detect the rate of breathing, the temperature of the breath, and the pressure of each inhalation and exhalation, then send that data to an app. In a hospital, the sensors could also send data to an administrator to monitor a larger team. “We showed that using the sensors, we could easily distinguish if there was a leak or not in the mask,” Traverso says. “That really helps inform the user that either the filter is actually saturated, or there’s essentially a short circuit if you have a leak and don’t have a good fit, and it can prompt the user to readjust the mask.”
....The team is working to bring the mask to market with a newly formed company called TEAL Bio, and is currently working on getting regulatory approval—potentially an emergency use authorization—and working to prepare the final design for manufacturing at scale, so it can get both to healthcare workers and the general public.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90574584/these-masks-change-color-when-youre-wearing-them-correctly

I know there is at least one really silly Connie Willis story in this
https://scitechdaily.com/nasa-selects-nokia-to-build-first-ever-cellular-network-on-the-moon/

Of course, people with disabilities don't even get a mention here...
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20190321-how-to-make-the-tech-industry-more-diverse

One of the things I always say to tech innovators is that they should find a military use for their product and then pitch it to DARPA. Recently, I went to an MIT lecture by a chemical botanist on the science of scent, and was amused to hear him say that his project was funded by DARPA.

But I digress. The point of this post is that I came across this article on how WW1 caused the widespread adoption of the wristwatch which, until then, had been thought of as a cheap, lower class accessory for those who could not afford a pocket watch.
http://www.vintagewatchstraps.com/trenchwatches.php#knowledgeforwar