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TECHNOLOGY IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST

LETTERSCan you say ‘surveillance’?
Re 'Auto insurers want to monitor your driving': Thanks for the article, but what is missing is: Who will get access to all this information?

Ryan Chin
When it comes to autonomous vehicles, seniors can lead the way
Retirement communities are relatively sheltered, low-speed environments that are ideal for autonomous vehicle transportation systems.

Joseph Coughlin
Getting from here to there
There is no single, technological silver bullet to transport elders, but that doesn’t mean a more scattershot strategy couldn’t work.

Gordon Marino
A still image from video released by the Department of Defense shows a 2004 encounter near San Diego between two Navy F/A-18F fighter jets and an unknown object. Despite Pentagon statements that it disbanded a once-covert program to investigate unidentified flying objects, the effort remains underway — renamed and tucked inside the Office of Naval Intelligence, where officials continue to study mystifying encounters between military pilots and unidentified aerial vehicles.
The night I saw a UFO
The exotic flying machine floating overhead was real. The vehicle emitted a whirring noise as it targeted my dog and me with a powerful klieg-like light.

Avi Loeb
This handout photo released by the European Southern Observatory on November 20, 2017 shows an artist's impression of the first interstellar asteroid: Oumuamua. This unique object was discovered on October 19, 2017 by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii.
Is an unknown space object a ‘message in a bottle’?
Oumuamua, discovered in 2017 by the Pan-STARRS observatory, showed many properties allowing for the possibility that it was manufactured artificially by an alien technology.

LETTERS
Attendees demonstrate Media Pipe, an artificial intelligence hand-recognizing application, during a Google AI event in San Francisco on Jan. 28, 2020.
Algorithms should be subject to continual audits to weed out bias
Biases’ roots run deep, but not all are mere spawn of the biases harbored by the developer.

EDITORIAL
How to fix Facebook for good
The controversy over whether the social network will reinstate Donald Trump is a distraction. Solving social media’s ills means going after a bigger target: the industry’s business model.

IDEAS | EVAN SELINGER
An employee prepares a package for shipment in a new Amazon logistics center in Germany.
Q&A: The social costs of AI
Researcher Kate Crawford challenges big assumptions about artificial intelligence.

IDEAS | Kalinda Ukanwa
The Federal Trade Commission is looking more closely at whether algorithmic lending systems violate credit-reporting laws. But companies might have their own reasons to tread carefully with the technology.
Algorithmic bias isn’t just unfair — it’s bad for business
If it’s not deployed wisely, artificial intelligence can turn consumers off.

EDITORIAL
An attendant directs cars to gas pumps as they queue to fill their gas tanks at a Costco in Charlotte, North Carolina on May 11 following a ransomware attack that shut down the Colonial Pipeline.
Pipeline shutdown shows need for tougher cybersecurity laws
To prevent crippling attacks, private firms that control critical infrastructure must share information with authorities.