The Download: tackling tech-facilitated abuse, and opening up AI hardware
After Gioia had her first child with her then husband, he installed baby monitors throughout their home—to “watch what we were doing,” she says, while he went to work. She’d turn them off; he’d get angry. By the time their third child turned seven, Gioia and her husband had divorced, but he still found ways to monitor her behavior. One Christmas, he gave their youngest a smartwatch. Gioia showed it to a tech-savvy friend, who found that the watch had a tracking feature turned on. It could be turned off only by the watch’s owner—her ex.
And Gioia is far from alone. In fact, tech-facilitated abuse now occurs in most cases of intimate partner violence—and we’re doing shockingly little to prevent it. Read the full story.
—Jessica Klein
This story is from the next print edition of MIT Technology Review, which explores power—who has it, and who wants it. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 25, so subscribe & save 25% to read it and get a copy of the issue when it lands!
Why AI hardware needs to be open
—by Ayah Bdeir, a leader in the maker movement, champion of open source AI, and founder of littleBits, the hardware platform that teaches STEAM to kids through hands-on invention.
Once again, the future of technology is being engineered in secret by a handful of people and delivered to the rest of us as a sealed, seamless, perfect device. When technology is designed like this, we are reduced to consumers. We don’t shape the tools; they shape us.
However, this moment creates a chance to do things differently. Because away from the self-centeredness of Silicon Valley, a quiet, grounded sense of resistance is reactivating. Read the full story.
MIT Technology Review Narrated: Deepfakes of your dead loved ones are a booming Chinese business
In China, people are seeking help from AI-generated avatars to process their grief after a family member passes away. Our story about this trend is the latest to be turned into a MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which we’re publishing each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as it’s released.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Iran is going offline to avoid Israeli cyberattacks
A government spokesperson said it plans to disconnect completely from the global internet this evening. (The Verge)
+ How attacks on Iran’s oil exports could hurt China. (WSJ $)
2 Trump is giving TikTok another reprieve from a US ban
It’s been a full five years since he signed the original executive order telling Bytedance to sell it. (CNN)
+ Why Chinese manufacturers are going viral on TikTok. (MIT Technology Review)
3 Conspiracy theories about the Minnesota shooting are all over social media
Whenever there’s an information vacuum, people are all too keen to fill it with noise and nonsense. (NBC)
+ The shooting suspect allegedly used data broker sites to find targets’ addresses. (Wired $)
4 Tensions between OpenAI and Microsoft are starting to boil over
OpenAI has even threatened to report its formerly close partner to antitrust regulators. (WSJ $)
+ Here are the concessions OpenAI is seeking. (The Information $)
+ Inside the story that enraged OpenAI. (MIT Technology Review)
5 California cops are using AI cameras to investigate ICE protests
And sharing license plate data with other agencies, a practice some experts say is illegal. (404 Media)
+ How a new type of AI is helping police skirt facial recognition bans. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Social media is now Americans’ primary news source
It’s overtaken TV for the first time. (Reuters)
+ They watched more TV via streaming than cable last month, too. (NYT $)
7 Weight loss drugs may not work quite as well as hoped
Researchers analysed data from 51,085 patients and found bariatric surgery delivered better, more sustainable results. (The Guardian)
8 What is AI doing to reading? 📖
Here’s what we stand to gain—and lose—when we outsource reading to machines. (New Yorker $)
9 India is relying on China to build up its EV market
It’s taking a drastically different course to the US. (Rest of World)
+ Why EVs are (mostly) set for solid growth in 2025. (MIT Technology Review)
10 People are building AI tools to decipher cats’ meows 😸
Bet at least half of them are “feed me.” (Scientific American $)
Quote of the day
“Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?”
—Remarks made by federal judge Williams G. Young this week as he voided some of the Trump administration’s cuts to National Institutes of Health grants, saying they were discriminatory, the New York Times reports.
One more thing
Why AI could eat quantum computing’s lunch
Tech companies have been funneling billions of dollars into quantum computers for years. The hope is that they’ll be a game changer for fields as diverse as finance, drug discovery, and logistics.
But while the field struggles with the realities of tricky quantum hardware, another challenger is making headway in some of these most promising use cases. AI is now being applied to fundamental physics, chemistry, and materials science in a way that suggests quantum computing’s purported home turf might not be so safe after all. Read the full story.
