Digitalisation – of Easter? [The New York Times]
It’s Good Friday today and none of us expected to spend it confined in our homes. Especially the in-door Easter egg hunt will be a downer for kids stuck at home. But religious groups from all over the world are trying to keep as many traditions as possible during this important time – and digital tools are here to help! In New York, the Jewish community is celebrating Passover through webcam dinners, online services and individual online greetings from Rabbi’s. Online masses, driveway blessings and virtual congregations are popping up everywhere – which we hope will make your festivities a little brighter at home!
Machines like EU [Bloomberg]
There once was a European Commission wanting to set global standards to make AI ethical – even if it meant regulating it, limiting the data it could use. Then came Covid-19. Deep learning supported research using open source data from all over the world, showing the potential of AI in times of crisis. So, the EU… carried on. In Ian McEwan’s latest book “Machines like me” – a good read for confinement – AI makes robots too similar to humans. The robots have strengths and weaknesses and can feel empathy and survival instinct, so good and perfect to be capable of imperfection and evil. There is a very fine regulatory balance to strike in making AI work for humanity without hampering its potential. Are a pandemic and looming recession good enough reasons to reshuffle the cards? CompEUter says no.
Space experts and the fight against COVID-19 [TechCrunch]
Some of the smartest and most creative problem-solvers in the world will join the global efforts in finding solutions to fight COVID-19. NASA issued an open call to its workforce to find solutions in areas where they are currently needed most, such as addressing gaps in the availability of protective medical equipment or ways to monitor the spread of the virus. NASA is already involved in some initiatives to help with COVID-19 such as offering supercomputing resources for research and developing AI solutions to support scientific investigations. All developed solutions from the crowdsourcing initiative will be “open source for any business or country to use”.
Gen Z’s smooth(er) transition into quarantine life [The Atlantic]
Zoom sororities, partying and dating in quarantine, Gen Z has got you covered. And it all started with a meme… A Facebook group ‘Zoom Memes for Self Quaranteens’, that grew to more than 315,000 members in two weeks, is now organising mega-Zoom parties like OK, Zoomer. A Party. to replace college parties. Mentors and mentees are being paired up as part of the faux Zoom sorority Zeta Omicron Omicron Mu and professional meme group moderators have been recruited to regulate the exponential growth of members. If you’re missing Tinder then QuarantBae is ready to set you up with a blind date with a matchmaking algorithm. College students are getting creative, let’s hope they apply it to their virtual classes too!
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In case you haven’t had enough…
The pandemic feeds tech companies’ power (The New York Times)
Stalin and Jar Jar Binks or Hitler and Jared Leto? Choose Your Quarantine House, the latest isolation meme, explained (The Washington Post)
How’s the internet doing? Depends where you look (Bloomberg)
This photographer is taking lockdown portraits over FaceTime (The Verge)