State of technology
📈 The Atlantic explains why America’s pandemic experts failed. In a nutshell: “For months, the American government had no idea how many people were sick with covid-19, how many were lying in hospitals, or how many had died. And the Covid tracking project at The Atlantic, started as a *temporary volunteer effort*, had become a de facto source of pandemic data for the US.” The piece details why we’re still thinking about pandemic data in the wrong ways. Admirable reporting (and activism).
✅ ‘Digital public goods’ refers to software, data sets, AI models, standards or content that are open source, do no harm, and contribute to sustainable national and international digital development. This is the first post in an upcoming series by Digital Public Goods Alliance that looks at the funding – this time, funding technologies.
💉 Lots being said about the pros and cons of vaccine passports. This podcast episode by Coda looks at how they may contribute to more global inequality; this piece from a Norweigen perspective says they would be reminiscent of authoritarian regimes; and this story says Russians are arranging to buy counterfeit vaccination documents through Telegram because there is so little trust in Russian-manufactured jab Sputnik.
😐 This piece on responsible AI at Facebook focuses on Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, Facebook’s Director of applied machine learning, who “got FB hooked on AI and now he can’t fix it”. Good exploration of the complexity of the individual versus the business “good people genuinely trying to do the right thing. But they're trapped in a rotten system.” Twitter reaction and commentary here.
😕 Sticking with Facebook algorithms, the Citizen browser project shows what different demographics see. Scroll down to see what Trump and Biden supporters were shown during the week after the capitol riots or what women and men were shown after Biden’s inauguration.
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