MIT Technology Review Narrated

In the second of two exclusive interviews, Technology Review’s Editor-in-Chief Gideon Lichfield sat down with Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s Chief Technology officer to discuss the rise of misinformation on the social media platform. Agrawal discusses some of the measures the company has taken to fight back, while admitting Twitter is trying to thread a needle of mitigating harm caused by false content...

Misinformation and social media have become inseparable from one another; as platforms like Twitter and Facebook have grown to globe-spanning size, so too has the threat posed by the spread of false content. In the midst of a volatile election season in the US and a raging global pandemic, the power of information to alter opinions and save lives (or endanger them) is on full display. In the first...

Defining what is, or isn’t artificial intelligence can be tricky (or tough). So much so, even the experts get it wrong sometimes. That’s why MIT Technology Review’s Senior AI Reporter Karen Hao created a flowchart to explain it all. In this bonus content our Host Jennifer Strong and her team reimagine Hao’s reporting, gamifying it into an audio postcard of sorts.  If you would like to see the orig...

AI can read your emotional response to advertising and your facial expressions in a job interview. But if it can already do all this, what happens next? In part two of a series on emotion AI, Jennifer Strong and the team at MIT Technology Review explore the implications of how it’s used and where it’s heading in the future. We meet:  Shruti Sharma, VSCO  Gabi Zijderveld, Affectiva Tim VanGoethem,...

Researchers have spent years trying to crack the mystery of how we express our feelings. Pioneers in the field of emotion detection will tell you the problem is far from solved. But that hasn’t stopped a growing number of companies from claiming their algorithms have cracked the puzzle. In part one of a two-part series on emotion AI, Jennifer Strong and the team at MIT Technology Review explore wh...

Automated driving is advancing all the time, but there’s still a critical missing ingredient: trust. Host Jennifer Strong meets engineers building a new language of communication between automated vehicles and their human occupants, a crucial missing piece in the push toward a driverless future. We meet:  Dr. Richard Corey and Dr. Nicholas Giudice, founders of the VEMI Lab at the University of Mai...

What weird bugs did you pick up last time you rode a subway train? A global network of scientists mapping the DNA of urban microbes and using AI to look for patterns pivots to tracking covid-19. Join host Jennifer Strong as she rides along on a subway-swabbing mission and talks to scientists racing to find an existing drug that might treat the disease. We meet:  Weill Cornell Medicine's Christophe...

What happens when an algorithm gets it wrong? In the first of a four-part series on face recognition, Jennifer Strong and the team at MIT Technology Review explore the arrest of a man who was falsely accused of a crime using facial recognition. The episode also starts to unpack the complexities of this technology and introduce some thorny questions about its use.   We meet:  Robert and Melissa Wil...

Clearview AI has built one of the most comprehensive databases of people’s faces in the world. Your picture is probably in there (our host Jennifer Strong’s was). In the second of a four-part series on facial recognition, we meet the CEO of the controversial company who tells us our future is filled with face recognition—regardless of whether it's regulated or not. We meet:  Hoan Ton-That, Clearvi...

The use of facial recognition by police has come under a lot of scrutiny. In part-three of our series, host Jennifer Strong takes you to Sin City, which actually has one of America’s most buttoned-up policies on when cops can capture your likeness. She also finds out why celebrities like Woody Harrelson are playing a starring role in conversations about this technology.  We meet:  Albert Fox Cahn,...

Police have a history of using face recognition to arrest protestors—something not lost on activists since the death of George Floyd. In the last of a four-part series on facial recognition, host Jennifer Strong explores the way forward for the technology and examines what policy might look like.  We meet: Artem Kuharenko, NTechLab Deborah Raji, AI Now Institute Toussaint Morrison, Musician, actor...

Welcome to a podcast about the automation of everything. Host Jennifer Strong and MIT Technology Review’s editors explore what it means to entrust AI with our most sensitive decisions.