Streaming services and social media outlets are reducing video quality to handle the influx of viewers on the platforms due to quarantine.

Facebook, Netflix, Disney+, and Apple TV+ are among the group of streaming services and social media outlets making changes to video quality to be able to support more viewers. The large demand is coming from the net strain from the majority of people in quarantine and self-isolation in their homes across multiple countries. Personally, I know that I have watched more Netflix and Hulu in the last two weeks than I have in the last six months. So, I’m sure many people are using this time to binge the shows that they have been waiting for the right time to watch, or having movie nights with their family because everyone is home.

The interesting thing about these services and sites making these announcements is that it means almost nothing to the viewer. Lowering video quality could sound like a big deal, but most are lowering bitrate, which is the amount of data streamed per second. This means that the change in bitrates will make it so each video uses less data, but viewers are unlikely to see a major change in picture quality, but will be using 25% less data. Another thing that sites like Youtube are implementing is making users default quality 480p, but if they notice a difference in quality they have the power to change it. It is little changes like this that will allow everyone to keep using all the services they want at all times.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52003035

Artificial Intelligence is being used to help researchers combat the Coronavirus.

This week, The White House announced a collaboration with researchers to try to implement AI and machine learning to better understand the novel Coronavirus. The White House’s main goal is to make coronavirus research accessible to AI researchers and their algorithms, so that researchers can use each other’s information to try to combat this crisis more efficiently. This is a pretty big deal considering the fact that the government doesn’t often pair with tech companies to accomplish goals. They plan to use artificial intelligence to sort through the huge influx of information that is being published about the virus everyday to hopefully help discover possible treatments or factors that make the virus worse. They plan to use AI algorithms like cross-referencing to accomplish this. 

Personally, I think that while it is a very terrifying time in our country, it is really cool to see all of these powerful and intelligent people coming together to tackle these problems. I think that using AI to sort through information will be very beneficial to all researchers because it takes a strenuous job off their shoulders, so that they can focus on finding cures instead of patterns in research. I do, however, think that while this will help researchers know more about the virus, it may not help find a cure any faster. The idea of AI tracking patterns will really help all of the researchers connect the dots, but I am not sure if it will lead to anything groundbreaking, I am hopeful though. 

https://www.wired.com/story/researchers-deploy-ai-better-understand-coronavirus/