MIT Technology Review Research Articles

Revisiting the Cultural and Linguistic Causality of Technogenic Stereotypes

The object of the study is fragments of lay discourse about artificial intelligence and new technologies that express antipathy. The subject of the study is evaluative and emotional judgments about technologies and forms of their linguistic objectification, rooted in the discourse as a product of linguaculture. The authors consider the issue of pessimistic perception of technological progress in Western society. A productive way to study this issue is the stereotype as a cognitive-linguistic phenomenon. It was accepted that stereotypes play a special role in representing general features of national, social and other human character traits. The authors conclude that one of the main functions of the stereotype is its orienting function, which has influence on the components of the human being’s personality. The authors used such scientific methods as: introspection, comparison, analysis of dictionary definitions, descriptive-interpretative method, interpretation of discourse. This methods, in combination with text markup techniques, made it possible to identify fragments of discourse that were significant for analysis. The research was based on the English language texts from The Guardian and The New York Times news aggregators, on materials from MIT Technology Review and Neuroscience News magazines. The authors conclude that technogenic stereotypes in English discourse have a mythological basis in the form of religious motives and specific linguacultural images. This contrasts with the rational-critical view of information technology innovation. Intermediate findings include the conclusion about the role of media, social networks, which are the key actor of the discourse of hype about technological expansion. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that a new area of public discussion has been allocated, which is considered in the light of data on the orienting function of the stereotype, which requires academic reflection by specialists from different fields.

Metamodern Spell Casting

Metamodern Spell Casting

A Summary of Research on Anti-aging from Genetic Perspective

As people age, the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases increases, and globally, with the continuous improvement of living standards, people's life expectancy is also increasing, so how to enjoy a healthy old age, more and more attention, how to delay aging is a matter of concern. Anti-aging drugs were named one of the top ten breakthrough technologies in the world by MIT Technology Review in 2020. This paper elaborates on the progress of anti-aging research and summarizes it to provide reference for anti-aging theoretical research.

Privacy without persons: a Buddhist critique of surveillance capitalism

Much has been written about artificial intelligence (AI) perpetuating social inequity and disenfranchising marginalized groups (Barocas in SSRN J, 2016; Goodman in Law and Ethics of AI, 2017; Buolamwini and Gebru in Conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency, 2018). It is a sad irony that virtually all of these critiques are exclusively couched in concepts and theories from the Western philosophical tradition (Algorithm Watch in AI ethics guidelines global inventory, 2021; Goffi in Sapiens, 2021). In particular, Buddhist philosophy is, with a few notable exceptions (Hongladarom in A Buddhist Theory of Privacy, Springer, Singapore, 2016; Hongladarom in The Ethics of AI and Robotics A Buddhist Viewpoint, Lexington Book, Maryland, 2020; Hongladarom in MIT Technology Review, 2021; Lin et al. in Robot Ethics: The Ethical and Social Implications fo Robotics, MIT, Cambridge, 2012; Promta and Einar Himma in J Inf Commun Ethics Soc 6(2):172–187, 2008), completely ignored. This inattention to non-Western philosophy perpetuates a pernicious form of intellectual imperialism (Alatas in Southeast Asian J Soc Sci 28(1):23–45, 2000), and deprives the field of vital intellectual resources. The aim of this article is twofold: to introduce Buddhist concepts and arguments to an unfamiliar audience and to demonstrate how those concepts can be fruitfully deployed within the field of AI ethics. In part one, I develop a Buddhist inspired critique of two propositions about privacy: that the scope of privacy is defined by an essential connection between certain types of information and personal identity (i.e., what makes a person who they are), and that privacy is intrinsically valuable as a part of human dignity (Council of the European Union in Position of the Council on General Data Protection Regulation, 2016). The Buddhist doctrine of not self (anattā) rejects the existence of a stable and essential self. According to this view, persons are fictions and questions of personal identity have no ultimate answer. From a Buddhist perspective, the scope and value of privacy are entirely determined by contextual norms—nothing is intrinsically private nor is privacy intrinsically valuable (Nissenbaum in Theor Inq Law 20(1):221–256, 2019). In part two, I show how this shift in perspective reveals a new critique of surveillance capitalism (Zuboff in J Inf Technol 30(1):75–89, 2015). While other ethical analyses of surveillance capitalism focus on its scale and scope of illegitimate data collection, I examine the relationship between targeted advertising and what Buddhism holds to be the three causes of suffering: ignorance, craving and aversion. From a Buddhist perspective, the foremost reason to be wary of surveillance capitalism is not that it depends on systematic violations of our privacy, but that it systematically distorts and perverts the true nature of reality, instilling a fundamentally misguided and corrupting conception of human flourishing. Privacy, it turns out, may be a red herring to the extent that critiques of surveillance capitalism frame surveillance, rather than capitalism, as the primary object of concern. A Buddhist critique, however, reveals that surveillance capitalism is merely the latest symptom of a deeper disease.

Contributors

Contributors

A commentary of Messenger RNA vaccines in MIT Technology Review 2021

One hundred years after the 1918 influenza pandemic, the world has seen another major outbreak on a global scale. This one is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), an enveloped positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus. According to the World Health Organization, as of June 17, 2021, there have been 176,693,988 confirmed cases of human coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), resulting in 3,830,304 deaths. Vaccines are the most effective way to prevent viral infection. During this pandemic, the speed at which the vaccine progressed from research and development to application was unprecedented. As of June 15, 2021, a total of 2,377,780,590 doses of various vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 have been administered worldwide. These vaccines included the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine, which became famous upon their debut application in the real world and was listed as one of the ‘10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2021’ by MIT Technology Review.①①Original source in Chinese: H. Qi, mRNA, Bulletin of National Natural Science Foundation of China. 35 (3) (2021) 402-403.

A commentary of green hydrogen in MIT Technology Review 2021

Due to the global energy crisis and environmental pollution, the development of green, sustainable, and low-cost energy has become the consensus of all mankind. Hydrogen has always been an essential form of clean energy. However, the majority of the hydrogen is produced from fossil energy sources through highly polluting and energy-intensive processes. Since the cost of generating electricity from solar and wind power is rapidly declining. This means that “green hydrogen” can be produced by coupling renewable energy technology with electrocatalytic hydrolysis technology. As an important direction of energy development in the future, “green hydrogen” was selected as one of the “10 Breakthrough Technologies 2021” on MIT Technology Review, which exhibits a broad development prospect and has become the focus of common concern in both academia and industry.①①Original source in Chinese: J. Gong, Green Hydrogen, Bulletin of National Natural Science Foundation of China. 35 (3) (2021) 416-418.

A commentary of Remote everything in MIT Technology Review 2021

Remote technology refers to applications that rely on wireless/wired network communication technology to enable the effective interconnection of multiple terminals distributed in different geographical locations, which helps to achieve effective information dissemination and sharing, and thereby improve the convenience and efficiency of remote working and learning. With the rapid development of sensor technology, information and communications technology (ICT), artificial intelligence (AI), and other related technologies, remote technology has made considerable progress since the 1970s and has been widely used in many fields, such as education, medicine. Especially the outbreak of COVID-19, remote technology achieves dramatically development within a short period of time, and leads to big changes in the way of working in many industries and peoples’ lifestyles. Therefore, it was selected as one of the “Top 10 Global Breakthrough Technologies” by MIT Technology Review in 2021.①①Original source in Chinese: Y. Cong, Remote everything, Bulletin of National Natural Science Foundation of China. 35 (3) (2021) 412-413.

A commentary of Multi-skilled AI in MIT Technology Review 2021

Towards the end of 2012, artificial intelligence (AI) scientists first figured out how to impart “vision” to neural networks. Later, they also mastered how to enable neural networks to mimic human reasoning, hearing, speaking, and writing. Although AI has become similar to or even superior to humans in accomplishing specific tasks, it still does not possess the “flexibility” of the human brain, i.e., the human brain can apply skills learned in one situation to another.Taking cues from the growth process of children, we think about the following question. If senses and language can be combined, and AI can perform at a level closer to humans in terms of collecting and processing information, will it be able to develop an understanding of the world? The answer is yes. “Multi-modal” systems, which can simultaneously acquire human senses and language, thereby generating significantly stronger AI, and making it easier for AI to adapt to new situations and solve new problems. Hence, such algorithms can be used to solve more complex problems, or be implanted into robots for communication and collaboration with humans in our daily lives. In September 2020, researchers from the Allen Institute for AI (AI2) created a model that could generate images from captions, thus demonstrating the ability of the algorithm to associate words with visual information. In November, scientists from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill developed a method of incorporating images into existing language models, which significantly enhanced the ability of the model to comprehend text. Early in 2021, OpenAI extended GPT-3 and released two visual language models: one associates the objects in the image with the words in the descriptions, and another one generates a digital image based on the combination of concepts it has learned. The progress made by “multi-modal” systems, in the long run, will help break through the limits of AI. It will not only unlock new AI applications, but also make these applications safer and more reliable. More sophisticated multi-modal systems will also aid the development of more advanced robot assistants. Ultimately, multi-modal systems may prove to be the first AI that we can trust.①①Original source in Chinese: R. Ji, Multi-skilled AI, Bulletin of National Natural Science Foundation of China. 35 (3) (2021) 413-415.

A commentary of Digital contact tracing in MIT Technology Review 2021

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought “digital contact tracing” to the forefront of public attention. In the context of COVID-19, technology has offered public health investigators a new capability for locating infected individuals, i.e., digital contact tracing. Through this technology, investigators were able to track the location of patients without relying on their memory, which alleviated disease surveillance pressure. The practical application of this technology is known as “Exposure Notification.” Developers were able to complete the creation and operation of this digital contact tracing system within a few weeks, and they made the code open-source to ensure that Apple and Android users worldwide could utilize it.①①Original source in Chinese: X. Cheng, Digital contact tracing, Bulletin of National Natural Science Foundation of China. 35 (3) (2021) 408-410.

A commentary of Lithium-metal batteries in MIT Technology Review 2021

Battery technology is a major challenge restricting the development of the electric vehicle industry. Lithium-ion batteries have been widely applied in electric vehicles. The lithium-ion battery based on organic electrolyte is expensive, bulky with a low energy density, and flammable in the collision. These shortcomings of the batteries are reflected in electric vehicles by their high price, limited battery life, long charging time, and potential safety hazards, which are the main reasons why electric vehicles are not preferred. However, if these limitations are addressed by a breakthrough in battery technology, electric vehicles can be more competitive than gasoline vehicles. QuantumScape, a Silicon Valley startup, claims to have developed an emerging lithium-metal battery that overcomes these drawbacks of routine lithium-ion batteries with a ceramic solid-state electrolyte.①①Original source in Chinese: Q. Zhang, Lithium-metal batteries, Bulletin of National Natural Science Foundation of China. 35 (3) (2021) 407-408.

A commentary of GPT-3 in MIT Technology Review 2021

Through the development of large-scale natural language models with writing and dialogue capabilities, artificial intelligence (AI) has taken a significant stride towards better natural language understanding (NLU) and human-computer interaction (HCI). As of today, the GPT-3 model, developed by OpenAI, is the language model with the most parameters, the largest scale, and the strongest capabilities. Using a large amount of Internet text data and thousands of books for model training, GPT-3 can imitate the natural language patterns of humans nearly perfectly. This language model is extremely realistic and is considered the most impressive model as of today.Despite its powerful modeling and description capabilities, there are significant issues and limitations. First and foremost, the GPT-3 model does not understand writing (natural language generation) well and sometimes generates uncontrollable content. Secondly, training the GPT-3 model requires a large amount of computing power, data, and capital investment, and releases significant carbon dioxide emissions. Developing similar models is only possible in laboratories with adequate resources. Furthermore, as the GPT-3 model is trained with Internet text data rife with error messages and prejudices, it often produces chapters and paragraphs with biased content similar to the training data.①①Original source in Chinese: M. Zhang, J. Li, GPT-3, Bulletin of National Natural Science Foundation of China. 35 (3) (2021) 403-406.

A commentary of Data trusts in MIT Technology Review 2021

Data trust is an emerging concept in trust typology studies and contemporary legislation on trusts. Trust systems originated in the UK and were developed in the US. In the legal sense, trust refers to the act of trusting a trustee, where the trustor, in accordance with his/her own interests, hands over assets to the trustee to manage. The act of a trustee who manages the data or data rights of a group of individuals is known as data trust. The data trustee manages the client's data or data rights as well as interests, similar to how a doctor acts in the best interest of a patient. Theoretically, data trusts allow users to exercise their rights as data producers.①①Original source in Chinese: X. Zhang, Data trusts, Bulletin of National Natural Science Foundation of China. 35 (3) (2021) 406-407.

A commentary of Hyper-accurate position in MIT Technology Review 2021

The positioning accuracy improvement of satellite navigation system support the development of industries related to high accuracy positioning. The BeiDou global satellite navigation system (BDS-3) started providing full-scale global services in 2020. BDS-3 provides meter-level standard positioning service, and decimeter- and centimeter-level positioning services with the precise point positioning (PPP) and the real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning technology. Moreover, millimeter-level positioning results can be achieved through ground-based differential positioning. These hyper-accurate positioning technologies will strongly support the development of autonomous driving, precision agriculture, geological hazard monitoring, etc.①①Original source in Chinese: Y. Yang, X. Ren, Hyper-accurate positioning, Bulletin of National Natural Science Foundation of China. 35 (3) (2021) 410-412.

Gatherings of an Infovore: Coping With More Than the Pandemic

Finding a new word in an article is a real treat for an infovore. So, when I came across “infodemic” in a recent Scientific American article, I immediately wanted to research where it came from. As is often said, “There is nothing new under the sun.” This was indeed true of this “new” word. The first several entries I found about this “neologism” attributed it to David Rothkopf writing in a May 2003 Washington Post article. Rothkopf argued that an infodemic was making the current outbreak of the SARS virus “harder to control and contain.” I thought that it was quite appropriate for the term to be resurrected and even more appropriately applied to the global dissemination of information concerning COVID-19. COVID has created a perfect storm for fringe science Grimes DR. Scientific American. April 26, 2021. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-has-created-a-perfect-storm-for-fringe-science/ Words we’re watching: ‘infodemic’ Merriam-Webster. https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/words-were-watching-infodemic-meaning BUZZWORD infodemic Maxwell K. Macmillan Dictionary. June 3, 2020. https://www.macmillandictionary.com/buzzword/entries/infodemic.html Managing the COVID-19 infodemic: promoting healthy behaviours and mitigating the harm from misinformation and disinformation WHO, UN, UNICEF, UNDP, UNESCO, UNAIDS, ITU, UN Global Pulse, and IFRC l 23. September 2020. https://www.who.int/news/item/23-09-2020-managing-the-covid-19-infodemic-promoting-healthy-behaviours-and-mitigating-the-harm-from-misinformation-and-disinformation Let’s flatten the infodemic curve World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/news-room/spotlight/let-s-flatten-the-infodemic-curve The coronavirus is the first true social-media “infodemic” Hao K, Basu T. MIT Technology Review. February 12, 2020. https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/12/844851/the-coronavirus-is-the-first-true-social-media-infodemic/ The coronavirus ‘infodemic’ is real. We rated the websites responsible for it. Gregory J. STAT News. February 28, 2020. https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/28/websites-spreading-coronavirus-misinformation-infodemic/ Scientists develop smart search app for COVID-19 literature University of Toronto. Medical Press. April 27, 2020. […]

Wearable Internet of Medical Things Sensor Devices, Big Healthcare Data, and Artificial Intelligence-based Diagnostic Algorithms in Real-Time COVID-19 Detection and Monitoring Systems

Introduction Wireless biomedical sensing devices and artificial intelligence-based diagnostic algorithms gather the alterations of vital signs in human body for medical data analysis. Methodology and Empirical Analysis Using and replicating data from Accenture, Deloitte, The Economist, eMarketer, Gartner, GE Healthcare, Ginger, McKinsey, MIT Technology Review Insights, PwC, R2G, SSCG Media Group, Statista, and Sykes, we performed analyses and made estimates regarding the integration of connected wearable medical devices and clinical data. Study Design, Survey Methods, and Materials The interviews were conducted online and data were weighted by five variables (age, race/ethnicity, gender, education, and geographic region) using the Census Bureau's American Community Survey to reflect reliably and accurately the demographic composition of the United States. (Chowdhury et al., 2020) Integrating connected wearable medical devices and clinical data leads to increased informed diagnostics and treatment decisions through remote patient monitoring and support care.

Is the Stock Market Worried About Climate Change? Lessons from the 2010s

On Christmas Eve 2019, the MIT Technology Review published an article entitled “The 2010s Were Another Lost Decade on Climate Change.” On New Year’s Day, the Washington Post published a longer article with the same title. Both pieces told basically the same story, one repeated by many environmentalists and climate experts, the failure to take meaningful action on climate change in the 2010s had dramatically exacerbated the problem. This article investigates how the stock market reacted to the negative climate-related news that emerged during the 2010s. The results suggest that at an aggregate level the stock market was unconcerned about the climate news, implying that the market believed that climate change would not have a major impact on future macroeconomic growth. There is evidence, however, that the market concluded that climate issues would be a significant problem for fossil fuel companies. TOPICS:ESG investing, Tail risks, financial crises and financial market history Key Findings ▪ According to many environmental experts, the 2010s were a lost decade for climate change, which foretold large future economic damages. This suggests that the 2010s should have been a bad decade for the stock market as it discounted the prospect of future climate-related costs. ▪ In fact, the decade of the 2010s was the second best in US history, surpassed only by the 1950s. The largest stock market drops that did occur during the decade were totally unrelated to climate news. ▪ Although the aggregate stock market was apparently unconcerned about climate change, climate worries did affect certain sectors. For instance, fossil fuel companies dramatically underperformed the overall market.

Toward High-Voltage Aqueous Batteries: Super- or Low-Concentrated Electrolyte?

Download : Download high-res image (85KB) Download : Download full-size image Dongliang Chao obtained his PhD from Nanyang Technological University (NTU, Singapore). He joined the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA, USA) in 2016 as a joint researcher. He is currently an ARC DECRA Fellow at the University of Adelaide (UoA, Australia), working on electrochemical mechanism and practical application of materials for next-generation safe, low-cost, and scalable energy storage. He is serving as the managing editor of Materials Today Energy. He was recently honored with the prestigious Innovators Under 35 (2020, MIT Technology Review), ARC Discovery Project (2019), and the Emerging Researcher (2019, Royal Society of Chemistry). Download : Download high-res image (121KB) Download : Download full-size image Shi-Zhang Qiao is currently a chair professor at School of Chemical Engineering and Advanced Materials of the University of Adelaide. His research expertise is in nanostructured materials for new energy technologies (batteries, electro-/photo-catalysis). He has co-authored 425 papers in refereed journals with 55,100 citations and h-index 121 (ISI). He was honored with a prestigious ARC Australian Laureate Fellow, ExxonMobil Award, ARC Discovery Outstanding Researcher Award, and an Emerging Researcher Award (ENFL Division, ACS). He is a fellow of Institution of Chemical Engineers (FIChemE) and Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and is a Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher (chemistry, materials science).

Data protection during the coronavirus crisis.

Smartphone apps to track SARS-CoV 2 infections need to fulfill certain minimal requirements to guarantee privacy and justify their use under data protection laws.

Is the Stock Market Worried About Climate Change? Lessons from the 2010s

On Christmas Eve 2019 the MIT Technology Review published an article entitled, The 2010s were another lost decade on climate change. On New Year’s Day the Washington Post published a longer article with the same title. Both pieces told basically the same story, one repeated by many environmentalists and climate experts, the failure to take meaningful action on climate change in the 2010s had dramatically exacerbated the problem. This article investigates how the stock market reacted to the negative climate related news that emerged during the 2010s. The results suggest that at an aggregate level the stock market was unconcerned about the climate news implying that the market believed that climate change would not have a major impact on future macro economic growth. There is evidence, however, that the market concluded that climate issues would be a significant problem for fossil fuels companies.