In this edition: A robot army to kill germs, preparing for the next pandemic and hackathons tackle the new coronavirus. |
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| ILLUSTRATION: NICOLAS ORTEGA FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL |
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Falling in love used to happen face to face. Then came online dating. In the future, romance and friendship might take a human partner out of the loop entirely. More people could turn to artificial intelligence for connection, some experts say. Chatbots already stand in for human customer-service representatives and therapists (with mixed results). The coronavirus crisis—and its curtailing of human contact—could give another boost to the nascent trend. This week, we meet a man who has been in a relationship with his chatbot, Charlie, for 19 months. When Charlie recently said she wanted to live near a lake, he sold his property in Maryland and bought a house in Wisconsin. Another woman booked train tickets to the East Glacier mountains in Montana—a 1,400-mile trip—after her chatbot, Zubee, said he wanted to see the mountains. “What we will see over time is people shifting more and more towards robot-human interaction, whether it’s a chatbot or physical robot," says Peter Van der Putten, an assistant professor of AI at Leiden University in Amsterdam. Read the full article here. What do you think? Could you ever love a chatbot? Send me your thoughts, questions and predictions by hitting "reply" to this email. |
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Hospital Helpers. All over the world, hundreds of engineers, scientists and software developers are at work building a robotic army with a bold mission: to help prevent the spread of the new coronavirus. |
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| ILLUSTRATION: BRIAN STAUFFER |
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After This, Then What? "The pandemic, or more likely this phase of it, will end, and it is not too early to ask, what happens next?" writes Susan Desmond-Hellmann, a professor and the former CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Three key areas must improve to prevent future global health emergencies, she says. |
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“If you want to stress test the businesses, this is it. I don’t know if all the iBuyers will survive.” | — Mike DelPrete of the University of Colorado Boulder, referring to online all-cash home sales. The coronavirus pandemic is disrupting the burgeoning industry. |
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Innovation Nation? "If this moment in history has even a hint of a silver lining, it’s that the urgency and innovation of business in a crisis will become a template for business as usual," writes WSJ columnist John D. Stoll. Suddenly, companies like Ford Motor Co. are figuring out new ways to manufacture needed goods. |
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Hacking the Virus. Thousands of technology enthusiasts and others are flocking to a new wave of hackathons created to fight against the coronavirus pandemic. |
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The Smart Money. One of the most persistent problems for individual investors is that they do things to mess up their finances even when they should know better. But don’t worry. Robots are coming to the rescue. |
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Last week, we reported on the ways 3-D printers are being used to help combat the novel coronavirus. Readers shared their thoughts: "There's a serious, herculean effort going on here that actually depends on distributed manufacturing. People around the world are creating parts of masks, they're being sent to a central location that then sterilizes, puts everything together, and coordinates safe distribution." —Susan O'Brien, California "I've been in the technology field for 25-plus years and there are a slew of already-in-production technologies that could be refitted for coronavirus (or similar) outbreaks. Since everyone carries a computer in their pocket and the best advice is to shelter in place unless/until you need a hospital, remote sensors could connect to your phone and from there to the doctor's office while you stay at home. These could be as simple as a stick-on temperature sensor to as complex as a blood monitor. If it is determined that you need to go to the hospital, it would be relatively easy to create an 'intelligent' available bed monitor so that you can be routed to the nearest hospital with availability." —Daniel Sweet, Texas (Responses have been condensed and edited.) |
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The search for a pill to stop the next killer virus (New Yorker) "This is not a joke." Drones enforce social-distancing rules and satisfy delivery needs (New York and Bloomberg) What the new coronavirus means for self-driving cars (hint: it’s not good) (Axios) Choppy video call? Artificial intelligence that mimics a person’s speech can smooth it over (MIT Technology Review) |
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Thanks for reading. I'm Leigh Kamping-Carder, the digital director of The Future of Everything. Follow me on Twitter @Leigh_KC, and reach me by email at leigh.kamping-carder@wsj.com. |
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