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This is today’s editiondownload,Our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the tech world.
South Africa’s private surveillance machine is fueling a digital apartheid
The thriving mega-city of Johannesburg, once home to Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, is now spawning a unique South African surveillance model. Over the past five years, the city center has hosted a coordinated, fully customized mass surveillance operation. Vumacam, the company that built the nationwide CCTV network, already has more than 6,600 cameras, with over 5,000 of them concentrated in Johannesburg. The video footage it takes is transmitted to security rooms around the country and then uses all sorts of AI tools like license plate recognition to track population movement and track individuals. These tools have been enthusiastically adopted by the local security industry, which is grappling with the pressures of the high crime environment.
Civil rights activists worry that the new surveillance is fueling a digital apartheid and unraveling people’s democratic freedoms, but a growing chorus of experts say the stakes are even higher. They argue that the impact of AI repeats the patterns of colonial history, and here in South Africa, where colonial heritage is abundant, the unbridled deployment of AI surveillance is just a case study of how the unbridled deployment of AI surveillance, a technology that promises to move societies into the future. threatens to send them to the past.Read the full story.
—Karen Hao and Heidi Swart
This is the first installment in our series on AI colonialism and explores how technology impoverishes communities and countries that have no say in its development. Part 2 will come in weeks and you can read Karen Hao’s introductory article.here.
How can we solve AI’s inequality problem?
The economy is being transformed by digital technologies, especially in artificial intelligence, that are rapidly changing the way we live and work. But this transformation poses a troubling puzzle: These technologies haven’t done much to grow the economy, and income inequality is worsening. Productivity growth, which economists consider necessary to improve living standards, has slowed drastically in many countries since at least the mid-2000s.
Why are these technologies failing to drive further economic growth? Why don’t they fuel more widespread well-being? To find an answer, some leading economists and policy experts take a closer look at how we invent and deploy artificial intelligence and automation and identify ways to make better choices.Read the full story.
—David Rotman
Aging clocks aim to predict how long you will live
Age is much more than the number of birthdays you track. Stress, sleep, and diet all affect how our organs cope with the wear and tear of everyday life; this can cause you to age faster or slower than people born on the same day. This means that your biological age can be quite different from your chronological age – the number of years you’ve lived.
Your biological age is probably a better reflection of your physical health and even your own mortality than your chronological age. But it’s not that easy to calculate, so scientists have spent the last decade developing tools called aging clocks that evaluate the signs in your body to reveal your biological age and estimate how many healthy years you have left. Advocates of aging clocks are already trying to use them to show that anti-aging interventions can make individuals biologically younger. But it is not clear that they are accurate or reliable enough to make such claims.Read the full story.
—Jessica Hamzelou
Aging watches are Tech Review’s clear winner11th breakthrough technology of 2022. Over 10,000 readers voted – if you’re one of them, thank you!
Word of the Day
“It’s like packing a bikini for a Siberian, using chopsticks to eat steak, teaching an eagle to swim.”
— An anonymous Shanghai resident details the frustrations of living in the city’s extreme zero covid quarantine as cases continue to rise. Guard.
must read
I scoured the internet for today’s most entertaining/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Russian soldier attacks a 300-mile front in Ukraine
The aim is to take full control of the Donbas region in the east of the country. (NYT $)
+ Putin’s desire to conquer Donbas is symbolic. (BBC) + The Foreign Ministry condemned the Russian airstrikes as a “terror campaign”. (WP $)
+ The siege of Mariupol seems to be coming to an end. (FT $)
2 Crypto hackers stealing bigger sums than ever
And it mainly depends on vulnerable, poorly managed open source code.(EN)
+ Bitcoin mining devastated the city of Plattsburgh in New York. (EN)
+ Case for keeping cash. (EN)
3 Even democracies use controversial spyware
The NSO paved the way for this type of surveillance to become horribly commonplace. (New Yorker $)
+ The British prime minister’s office is allegedly attacked by NSO spyware. (Guard)
+ The hacker industry is too big to fail anymore. (EN)
4 Facebook invests in Nigeria internet infrastructure
Yes, you guessed it. User information. (Guard)
+ He was accused of failing to moderate misinformation in Africa. (Guard)
5 Intel claims its artificial intelligence can read students’ emotions
Spoilers on the subject: no. Not exactly anyway. (Protocol)
+ Emotion AI researchers say exaggerated claims give their work a bad name. (EN)
How serious is Elon Musk about owning Twitter?
And should we be worried? (Atlantic Ocean $)
+ Twitter’s board is working hard to avoid a scenario where it buys 100% of the company. (Bloomberg $)
+ Twitter’s edit button can show what the tweet originally looked like. (TechCrunch)
7 Food in Metaverse isn’t so good
Because – shocking – you can’t really eat it! (insider)
+ Here’s how to let a metaverse die with dignity. (Polygon)
8 A former Dollar General employee uses TikTok to force union representation
Instead of listening to his concerns, the company fired him. But it does not go quietly. (NYT $)
+ Amazon’s warehouse in New Jersey became the last warehouse voted from the union. (WP $)
9 Online white supremacist communities prey on youth
To combat this, even anti-racist material has been weaponized. (Atlantic Ocean $)
10 Here’s How You Should Be Texting 
Sorry, grammar buffs! (WP $)
We can still have beautiful things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these strange times. (Any ideas?Write meortweet me.)
+ This video by Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca)Speaking English on the set of Star WarsIt’s hilarious helping Harrison Ford react to his lines.
+ I have a half-hearted respect for this unpleasant sightIs it cake?
+ Yet another Wordle clone,redactionIt forces you to guess the edited words from Wikipedia articles.
+Scary MapsThe Twitter account may not be very useful, but it’s funny.
+ This profile of mob boss David Ruggeriototally mind blowing.
+ Read the sweet story of Molly and Davidmeeting while being a shield during the pandemic.
+ Review by comedian MunyaWhat it’s like as soon as the sun comes up in Englandin place.
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