Technology

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has been sharing regular updates about how his agency is approaching the rapidly changing global coronavirus pandemic situation. This week, NASA escalated its response multiple times due to changing circumstances, including changing the state of working conditions at all of its facilities across the country. On Friday the agency summarized the current status of each of its facilities and major projects in a comprehensive update.

Work continues on a few missions that are deemed critical, and on projects where remote and telework are possible. These include the Commercial Crew Program, which is set to return human spaceflight capabilities to American soil via private partners. Boeing and SpaceX are NASApartners for this program, and NASA says that this is going ahead despite the requirement of in-person operations because it represents &a critical element to maintaining safe operations on the International Space Station and a sustained U.S. presence on the orbiting laboratory.& SpaceX and NASA confirmed earlier this week that they still plan to launch the first crewed Dragon mission to the ISS in mid to late May.

For the purpose of keeping ISS crew &fully supplied and safe,& NASA says that it will continue to operate its commercial resupply missions, too, which ferry experiments, food, water and more to the space station using vehicles including SpaceXDragon cargo capsule. For similar reasons, it&ll keep open the Mission Control Center at Johnson Space Center, with flight control personnel in place, though itadding &additional measures& to ensure the safety of those present.

Meanwhile, work on the James Webb Telescope in California is temporarily suspended, which means the integration and testing that was happening in preparation for its planned launch next March. Preparations for NASAMars 2020 launch, which includes its Perseverance rover and Mars Helicopter exploration vehicles also continue: that mission is scheduled for July 2020.

Therealso virtual inspection work being done on the X-59 piloted supersonic test plane thatbeing developed in California, and Lockheed Martin, which is building the aircraft for the agency, is continuing in-person work on that project. NASA is keeping the lights on at Ames Research Center in California, too, in order to ensure that the agencyIT security and supercomputing operations can continue uninterrupted.

Existing spacecraft mission support will continue, as will astronaut training (which is generally subject to strict isolation protocols to prevent illness anyway). Earlier this week, the agency announced it would suspend work on the SLS spacecraft and the Orion capsule that will carry the fundamental components of its Artemis program, which aims to get humans back to the Moon, and eventually to Mars. Artemis has been sticking to a stated 2024 time frame for its mission of returning people to the surface of the Moon, but these setbacks in total represent the most sure sign yet that we&ll probably see that window slip, though many skeptical of the schedule have suggested it would actually be later than that anyway.

In a career spanning several decades, artificial intelligence researcher and professor Stuart Russell has contributed extensive knowledge on the subject, including foundational textbooks. He joined us onstage at TC Sessions: Robotics + AI to discuss the threat he perceives from AI, and his book, which proposes a novel solution.

Russellthesis, which he develops in &Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control,& is that the field of AI has been developed on the false premise that we can successfully define the goals toward which these systems work, and the result is that the more powerful they are, the worse they are capable of. No one really thinks a paperclip-making AI will consume the Earth to maximize production, but a crime-prevention algorithm could very easily take badly constructed data and objectives and turn them into recommendations that cause real harm.

The solution, Russell suggests, is to create systems that aren&t so sure of themselves — essentially, knowing what they don&t or can&t know and looking to humans to find out.

The interview has been lightly edited. My remarks, though largely irrelevant, are retained for context.

TechCrunch: Well, thanks for joining us here today. You&ve written a book. Congratulations on it. In fact, you&ve actually, you&ve been an AI researcher and author, teacher for a long time. You&ve seen this, the field of AI sort of graduated from a niche field that academics were working in to a global priority in private industry. But I was a little surprised by the thesis of your book; do you really think that the current approach to AI is sort of fundamentally mistaken?

Stuart Russell: So let me take you back a bit, to even before I started doing AI. So, Alan Turing, who, as you all know, is the father of computer science — thatwhy we&re here — he wrote a very famous paper in 1950 called &Computing Machinery and Mind,& thatwhere the Turing test comes from. He laid out a lot of different subfields of AI, he proposed that we would need to use machine learning to create sufficiently intelligent programs.

The restaurant industry might look a lot different once we come out of this pandemic. As social distancing and lockdowns ripple across the nation in an attempt to fight COVID-19, some restaurants won&t be able to handle the lack of income and might tip into bankruptcy. Some might never reopen again. Earlier today, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo implemented a 90-day moratorium, or temporary prohibition, on evictions for residents and businesses such as restaurants.

Ayr Muir, the owner of Clover, a chain of veggie-friendly fast food joints, filed for unemployment recently. Clover is on hiatus but is working to connect its farmers and suppliers directly to customers to help them stay afloat.

&Iteasy to say ‘thereunemployment benefits& or ‘there are SBA loans,& but when you get down to the details ita lot more nuanced,& Muir said. &I have staff who are scared to apply for government benefits, some fear it will impact their legal status, like if you&re here on a student visa. And the process can be really confusing.&

He says he filled out his own unemployment application the other day but isn&t sure he did it correctly. &This just adds to the feeling of uncertainty and stress.&

Entrepreneurs from all over the country are trying to unlock different ways to help vulnerable local restaurants buy themselves some time. Itoften in the form of purchasing gift cards from your favorite neighborhood spots.

The trend, much like other ways big tech is helping others out during this pandemic through free promos or access to services, can be looked at in two ways. First, ita way to make this transition less stressful. Second, and perhaps more cynically thanks to capitalism, offering free services is a way to pipeline eventual customers down the road.

Letfocus on the former, because it is Friday, I miss writing about good news and these efforts deserve a fist bump for being a net positive for local shops.

SaveOurFaves

Started by Kaitlyn Krieger and her husband, Mike Krieger, the co-founder of Instagram, SaveOurFaves wants to help Bay Area residents buy gift cards for nearby restaurants. You can divide by neighborhood and region, like San Francisco, East Bay, Marin or South Bay, and pick a local business.

For what itworth, some San Francisco restaurants have already temporarily closed, even though they could stay open and sell take out. La Taqueria, one of the citymost famous burrito spots, is one high-profile example.

On the site, the duo notes that restaurants have tons of fixed costs, like rent, labor, loan repayments, insurance, supplies, repairs — the list goes on. Even &successful restaurants have razor thin margins of 3-5%, and a third have struggled to pay employees at least once.&

Help Main Street

Lunchbox, Eniac Ventures and a group of volunteers started Help Main Street so residents around the country could buy gift cards for their favorite businesses. The goal is to help local businesses recover lost revenue, and businesses range from Abettor Brewing Company in Winchester, Ky. to 45 Surfside in Nantucket, Mass. We wrote about it when it launched a couple days ago, and EniacNihal Mehta said there will be a Patreon-of-sorts option coming soon. It has roughly 14,000 listings on the website so far.

Open Table

Open Table, a company that lets you book reservations at restaurants, has a feature that lets users buy gift cards from restaurants.

Rally for Restaurants

Boston-based unicorn Toast created Rally for Restaurants to help people buy gift cards for businesses and challenge their friends to do the same. This covers restaurants across the nation.

Support Local

USA TodaySupport Local does the same as the sites above, with more pickings from San Francisco and Austin than other cities.

Help Your Hood

Help Your Hood is another marketplace for people to buy gift cards. On the website, it notes that if you don&t already have a gift card system set up in your business, the Gift Up App has agreed to waive its fees for the first $5,000 in vouchers for each business that comes through Help Your Hood.

List your restaurant

Arteen Arabshahi, an investor at WndrCo, created a Google Form so restaurants could sign up to be featured on these services in one fell swoop.

I worked at a local coffee shop during my last year of college right down the street from a Starbucks, Dunkin& Donuts and a Caffe Nero. The owners lived a five-minute walk, one-minute sprint away. The cook, Brandon, came in at 4 a.m. to make fresh cranberry scones. If you brought a crying baby in, Ali, the previous owner, couldn&t resist giving you kind eyes and a fresh espresso brownie for free. And one customer came in every morning to grab four coffees to go, and came back every afternoon to return the tray so we could reuse it the next day.

That coffee shop is closed indefinitely, and like many restaurants, it is donating its inventory to people who might need it. The charm can&t be remanufactured, and I hope it opens again soon.

I&ll end with a note from CloverMuir. He said that gift cards are a &nice expression of good will but they&re not going to halt the giant wave that threatens to wipe out restaurants everywhere.&

So, letstart small and give back. And then lethope that we see more government officials show up to help restaurants on a larger scale.

Robocalls have been targeting the vulnerable and unsuspecting for years, so itno surprise that the scumbags would take advantage of the current global catastrophe to enhance their scams. The FCC warns that it has received numerous reports of coronavirus-related robocall cons in the wild — herewhat to look for.

While previous robocall scams threatened IRS penalties or promised free vacations, the new ones are using both pandemic-related and personal information to make what could for some be a pretty convincing pitch. Here are a few common scams the FCC has been alerted to:

• Warnings of national quarantine or martial law — these could be trying to get you to order something or just part of a coordinated disinformation campaign
• Messages purporting to be from the WHO or charities asking for money
• Offers of free virus test kits — some of these are targeting individuals with diabetes specifically, offering a free blood sugar monitor as well
• Offering HVAC cleaning or upgrades to protect against the virus
• Promotions of various bogus products and treatments for the virus
• Asking for information to confirm a check from the government — the process for this if it happens will not be a random text message

The FCC post has some examples, including audio, of some of these scams, in case you&re wondering what it might sound like to receive a malicious HVAC solicitation.

As a general robocall rule, unknown numbers — especially from your home area code — are a red flag. Let them go to message and you can always listen later. If ita local business saying your orderready or a hospital reminding you of your appointment, they&ll say so.

Anyone asking for personal or payment info over phone, text or email is almost certainly a scammer. There is almost never any need to share this information insecurely.

Links in text messages from unknown or suspicious numbers are never to be touched. They may lead to being hacked or tracked via means hosted on the web.

Stay safe out there, and lethope the upcoming regulatory framework aimed at combating robocalls does the trick.

In response to the COVID-10 outbreak, Hulu is adding a free, live news stream to its app for customers who only subscribe to its on-demand service, not its live TV add-on. The news coverage is provided in partnership with ABC News Live, and brings live news 24/7 to Hulu on-demand subscribers as part of their existing subscription.

This includes those who pay for Hulu alone as well as those who pay for the newer Disney+/Hulu/ESPN+ bundle subscription, the company noted. And it will be available to both tiers of Huluon-demand service, including the ad-supported and HuluNo Ads plan.

The live stream will also be featured in the &Hulu Picks& section for easy access and will be available across living room and mobile devices, as well as popular game consoles.

Hulu Live TV customers, meanwhile, already have a number of live TV news channels they can watch as a part of their subscription. But Huluon-demand service is far larger, with 27.2 million paid subscribers, compared with just 3.2 million for Live TV.

Health organizations and political leaders have urged Americans to get their news from trusted sources during the COVID-19 crisis — not from social media, where misinformation spreads more quickly than tech companies can moderate or remove. (When and if they try to do so.)

Meanwhile, the uncertainty around the coronavirus outbreak has led to a significant number of online rumors, hoaxes, conspiracy theories, and snake oil cures. Earlier this week, for example, a fake news report of a national quarantine spread so quickly that the National Security Council had to post a statement to assure Americans the news was untrue.

The addition of live news for Hulu arrives at a time when a growing number of U.S. consumers have cut the cord with traditional pay TV or chose to never sign up in the first place. In Hulucase, the company says close to half its customers fall into one of those two buckets.

&More than 45 percent of Hulu viewers have either cut the cord or never had cable, and may not have access to live, televised news to receive critical information during times of national crisis,& the company said, in an announcement. &With this live stream, we aim to keep our viewers informed during this unprecedented time when having access to information is vital to our communities,& Hulu said.

In addition, fewer U.S. consumers today subscribe to a daily newspaper than in generations prior. Instead, much of our &TV viewing& is now taking place in on-demand apps like Netflix and Hulu, and our news is gathered in bits and pieces online.

Hulu isn&t the first streaming provider to add free live news to its service as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. This week, Sling TV launched free streaming that included live news from ABC News Live, as well.

Of course, you don&t need to be a Hulu subscriber to watch ABC News Live. The news service streams online and through the ABC News app for free. But integration into major streaming apps like Hulu will make the service more accessible and more visible, as it won&t require people to seek out a separate app just to watch.

As society comes to grips with the growing worldwide crisis related to the COVID-19 virus, many companies are stepping up in different ways. Today, two major tech companies — Amazon and IBM — each announced programs to encourage developers to find solutions to a variety of problems related to the pandemic.

For starters, AWS, Amazoncloud arm, announced the AWS Diagnostic Development Initiative. It has set aside $20 million, which it will distribute in the form of AWS credits and technical support. The program is designed to assist and encourage teams working on COVID-19 diagnostic issues with the goal of developing better diagnostic tooling.

&In our Amazon Web Services (AWS) business, one area where we have heard an urgent need is in the research and development of diagnostics, which consist of rapid, accurate detection and testing of COVID-19. Better diagnostics will help accelerate treatment and containment, and in time, shorten the course of this epidemic,& Teresa Carlson wrote in the companyDay One blog today.

The program aims to help customers who are working on building diagnostics solutions to bring products to market more quickly, and also encourage teams working on related problems to work together.

The company also announced it was forming an advisory group made up of scientists and health policy experts to assist companies involved with initiative.

Meanwhile, IBM is refocusing its 2020 Call for Code Global Challenge developer contest on not only solving problems related to global climate change, which was this yearoriginal charter, but also solving issues around the growing virus crisis by building open-source tooling.

&In a very short period of time, COVID-19 has revealed the limits of the systems we take for granted. The 2020 Call for Code Global Challenge will arm you with resources […] to build open source technology solutions that address three main COVID-19 areas: crisis communication during an emergency, ways to improve remote learning, and how to inspire cooperative local communities,& the company wrote in a blog post.

All of these areas are being taxed as more people are forced to stay indoors as we to try to contain the virus. The company hopes to incentivize developers working on these issues to help solve some of these problems.

During a time of extreme social and economic upheaval when all aspects of society are being affected, businesses, academia and governments need to work together to solve the myriad problems related to the virus. These are just a couple of examples of that.