State of technology
😑 Amazon just opened up its Sidewalk network for anyone to build connected gadgets on. This means that 90% of the US population can access the now-public network. Great! How though? Well, Amazon is sharing a small portion of users' WiFi bandwidth, for example, people’s doorbells and home WiFi. Cheeky. It doesn't offer any direct incentives to users for sharing their resources unlike Helium (a decentralised physical infrastructure network) which fosters a collaborative ecosystem and rewards users with $HNT for setting up and operating hotspots.
🇳🇱 The Netherlands produces 4 times more nitrogen than the average EU country and as part of its pledge to half emissions by 2030, the government has introduced nitrogen permits to construction jobs that would not make the crisis worse. Microsoft’s latest data centre is yet to receive a permit (the local environment agency is still assessing the paperwork) but the Big Tech company has started building it anyway. It received a ‘tolerance decision’ meaning it is building at risk. Unsurprisingly, people are angry at the double standards.
🇺🇸 Here’s a terrifying tale about health insurance companies in the US using algorithmic tools — rather than medically trained professionals — to determine whether patients who are enrolled in their Medicare [dis?]Advantage programmes are worthy of care. The Verge has an overview but the full report comes from Stat News. TL;DR: the non-transparent use and development of the algorithms – combined with profit incentive – is concerning.
🔴 AI ‘fairness’ research is being held back by lack of diversity – most authors of papers on the potential biases of artificial intelligence tools in health care are predominantly white, male and from high-income countries. “A more inclusive culture could help to retain scientists from marginalised groups in research who, in turn, will help to reduce bias built into these tools,” says Massachusetts Institute of Technology Clinical Research Director Leo Anthony Celi.
👍 The hard work of change, hype cycles and why LLMs aren’t a quick fix is a nice post by Jason Kitcat, Director of Digital, Data and Technology at the UK’s Department for Business and Trade. “Technology-led change just does not work. It’s only through multidisciplinary teams working in a user-centred way iterating on user feedback that genuine, lasting improvement happens.” |