IEEE Spectrum reporter Daniel Dern spotlights the work of alumna Merryl Gross, an information architect and senior UX designer for a company that develops web-based software that helps nurses and doctors manage the care of patients with dialysis and other conditions. Gross explains that user design is basically, “applying human psychology to the design of made objects.”
Axios reporter Erica Pandey writes that a new working paper by MIT researchers explores the potential pitfalls posed by using algorithms to aid the hiring process. "Lots of companies have taken interest in using AI tools in the recruiting process," explains Prof. Danielle Li. "In that world, algorithms stand to have a big impact."
Writing for the Financial Times, Prof. Carlo Ratti and Anna König Jerlmyr, the mayor of Stockholm, explore how to reduce demand on urban infrastructure and make cities more efficient. “Covid-19 has proved that changing routines is possible, so we can decide how our cities function,” they write. “Flattening the curve has been a painful response to a crisis but, in cities, it can be used as a strategy to bring greater wellbeing to our everyday lives.”
Writing for Wired, Ash Carter, an innovation fellow at the MIT Innovation Initiative, spotlights a number of “technologists, activists, and policymakers who are thoughtfully creating and using technology in ways to protect the public good and help shape a better future.”
NBC News reporters Lindsay Hoffman and Caroline Kim spotlight graduate student Joy Buolamwini’s work uncovering racial and gender bias in AI systems in a piece highlighting women who are “shattering ceilings, making groundbreaking discoveries, and spreading public awareness during the global pandemic.” Hoffman and Kim note that Buolamwini’s research "helped persuade these companies to put a hold on facial recognition technology until federal regulations were passed.”
Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. D. Fox Harrell, Francesca Panetta and Pakinam Amer of the MIT Center for Advanced Virtuality explore the potential dangers posed by deepfake videos. “Combatting misinformation in the media requires a shared commitment to human rights and dignity — a precondition for addressing many social ills, malevolent deepfakes included,” they write.
Fast Company reporter Steven Melendez spotlights Minglr, an open-source tool that is aimed at connecting attendees at virtual conferences for brief video conversations. “If you’re in a group like a conference, one thing people might do is contact people they know,” says Prof. Thomas Malone. “Other people could contact people they have heard of but not met.”
Scientific American reporter Robin Lloyd spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a new app that “allows users to adjust parameters such as mask usage, ventilation, and room size to estimate the indoor transmission risk for SARS-CoV-2 among a given number of people in various types of spaces.”
CNN reporter Christine Walker spotlights the MIT App Inventor 2020 virtual hackathon, which allowed aspiring coders from all over the world to create apps aimed at improving the global good. “There was a sense of helplessness that was settling down. And a big theme in our workplace is empowerment," says Selim Tezel, a curriculum developer for App Inventor. "We wanted to give them a context in which they could be creative and sort of get rid of that feeling of helplessness."
Fast Company reporter Mark Wilson spotlights Prof. Ekene Ijeoma’s project, A Counting, which aims to capture audio recordings of the more than 1,300 languages that Americans speak. “The question for A Counting is how we can count to a whole using everyone’s voices to represent,” says Ijeoma, “not just languages, but voices and accents as a way of representing their cultural and ethnic identities.”
Writing for Fortune, graduate student Jenny Blessing and alumni McCoy Patiño, Tran Nguyen, and Julian Gomez explore how providing tracking options for mail-in ballots could help mitigate the risks of mailing delays. “Mail tracking capability increases accountability of the USPS and boosts public confidence in voting by mail,” they write.
MIT researchers have developed a new model that helps quantify a company’s security risk, and estimates possible financial losses, reports Catherine Stupp for The Wall Street Journal. The tool “collects encrypted data from companies about recent incidents and analyzes the anonymized information to determine the probability of different kinds of attacks more broadly,” writes Stupp.
A wireless system developed by CSAIL researchers can monitor movement and vital signs without using video, while also preserving privacy, reports Darrell Etherington for TechCrunch. “The system has the potential to be used at long-term care and assisted living facilities to provide a higher standard of support, while also ensuring that the privacy of the residents of those facilities is respected,” writes Etherington.
Writing for Fortune, graduate student Nina McMurry examines how public health authorities can allay fears about contact tracing apps. “Public health authorities need to make sure that the public understands what the technology is doing,” McMurry and her co-authors write. “Even if an app is privacy-preserving, the public may not perceive it as such.”
Writing for New Scientist, Vijaysree Venkatraman spotlights “Coded Bias,” a new documentary that chronicles graduate student Joy Buolamwini’s “journey to uncover racial and sexist bias in face-recognition software and other artificial intelligence systems.”