vihart

Outpacing the Virus (new whitepaper)

Added 2020-04-04 20:20:13 +0000 UTC

Hey all you good humans,

Difficult to believe that Pi Day was just three weeks ago, when I wrote about how my goal with the Pi Day video this year was to sneakily get PSA info to people who weren't taking COVID-19 seriously and weren't seeking out information about it.

In the days after Pi Day, the situation in the US changed so quickly that the video soon became obsolete. At this point there is almost no one living in such a bubble that this situation is not affecting them in some way.

In the weeks after Pi Day, I tried to resist digging in on what I thought might be solutions and focus on understanding a bigger picture of the situation and the impact on the future. I ended up trying to understand one area where I was seeing a lot of misinformation and miscommunication, particularly technological responses to the virus.

And so, in a massive collaboration involving a dozen experts in different fields, we wrote an extremely comprehensive and up-to-date whitepaper on contact tracing for COVID-19 and mitigating privacy concerns, and it is very good!

Here is the link to the paper: https://ethics.harvard.edu/outpacing-virus

Here is a Washington Post op-ed that references us: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/03/we-need-tech-government-help-with-contact-tracing-that-doesnt-have-mean-big-brother/

I'm extremely proud of this paper, and of my collaborators. It's been a pleasure to work with such amazing folks jumping in with passion and enthusiasm together on this common goal. I learned so much in the past week.

I hope all of you are staying safe and finding ways to be you in this new world.