They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but humans can judge whether another person is sick by looking at a photo for just a few seconds.
That may not sound remarkable — until you consider that the sick people in the photos were in the very early stages of illnesses. They were participants in a scientific experiment and had agreed to be infected with a bacterium that would cause an inflammatory response. Their portraits were taken just two hours after infection.
Why is the U.S. allowing scientists to create deadly viruses?
In part 5 of a 6-part lecture, Hans Rosling uses statistics to give an overview of population growth and an explanation of why the total human population will never reach 11 billion, as others predict and fear.
But tech wasn’t all bad this year. As many of Silicon Valley’s largest companies were wreaking havoc, numerous people and organizations used technology to advance important causes and address large-scale problems.
These projects do not always make headlines, but they show what’s possible when technologists use their powers for good. So I’m presenting the first-ever Actually Good Tech Awards, to highlight a handful of tech efforts that produced real societal benefits this year.
Amid a series of scandals and sins, a few righteous tech innovators actually brought positive change this year.
“To adventure and fellowship.”
In response to growing concerns about autonomous weapons, a coalition of AI researchers and advocacy organizations released a fictitious video on Monday that depicts a disturbing future in which lethal autonomous weapons have become cheap and ubiquitous.
The video was launched in Geneva, where AI researcher Stuart Russell presented it at an event at the United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons hosted by the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots.
Russell, in an appearance at the end of the video, warns that the technology described in the film already exists and that the window to act is closing fast.