In a study, which was uploaded to Arxiv and has not been peer-reviewed, researchers trained a large language model using both speech captured by smartphones as well as acoustic data from background noise to look for patterns that could indicate when they want help from the device. The model was built in part with a version of OpenAI’s GPT-2, “since it is relatively lightweight and can potentially run on devices such as smartphones,” the researchers wrote. The paper describes over 129 hours of data and additional text data used to train the model, but did not specify the source of the recordings that went into the training set. Six of the seven authors list their affiliation as Apple, and three of them work on the company’s Siri team according to their LinkedIn profiles. (The seventh author did work related to the paper during an Apple internship.)

The results were promising, according to the paper. The model was able to make more accurate predictions than audio-only or text-only models, and improved further as the size of the models grew larger. Beyond exploring the research question, it’s unclear if Apple plans to eliminate the “Hey Siri” trigger phrase.

Neither Apple, nor the paper’s researchers immediately returned requests for comment.

Currently, Siri functions by holding small amounts of audio and does not begin recording or preparing to answer user prompts until it hears the trigger phrase. Eliminating that “Hey Siri” prompt could increase concerns about our devices “always listening”, said Jen King, a privacy and data policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. 

The way Apple handles audio data has previously come under scrutiny by privacy advocates. In 2019, reporting from The Guardian revealed that Apple’s quality control contractors regularly heard private audio collected from iPhones while they worked with Siri data, including sensitive conversations between doctors and patients. Two years later, Apple responded with policy changes, including storing more data on devices and allowing users to opt-out of allowing their recordings to be used to improve Siri. A class action suit was brought against the company in California in 2021 that alleged Siri is being turned on even when not activated.  

The “Hey Siri” prompt can serve an important purpose for users, according to King. The phrases provide a way to know when the device is listening, and getting rid of that might mean more convenience, but less transparency from the device, King told MIT Technology Review. The research did not detail if the trigger phrase would be replaced by any other signal that the AI assistant is engaged. 

“I’m skeptical that a company should mandate that form of interaction,” King says.

The paper is one of a number of recent signals that Apple, which is perceived to be lagging behind other tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Facebook in the artificial intelligence race, is planning to incorporate more AI into its products. According to news first reported by VentureBeat, Apple is building a generative AI model called MM1 that can work in text and images, which would be the company’s answer to Open AI’s ChatGPT and a host of other chatbots by leading tech giants. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported that Apple is in talks with Google about using the company’s AI model Gemini in iPhones, and on Friday the Wall Street Journal reported that it had engaged in talks with Baidu about using that company’s AI products.

How scientists traced a mysterious covid case back to six toilets

This week I have a mystery for you. It’s the story of how a team of researchers traced a covid variant in Wisconsin from a wastewater plant to six toilets at a single company. But it’s also a story about privacy concerns that arise when you use sewers to track rare viruses back to their source.

That virus likely came from a single employee who happened to be shedding an enormous quantity of a very weird variant. The researchers would desperately like to find that person.

But what if that person doesn’t want to be found? And is there an ethical obligation to try to learn what we can so that we can try to help people who are harboring these viruses? Read the full story.

—Cassandra Willyard

This story first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.

This startup wants to fight growing global dengue outbreaks with drones

The world is grappling with dengue epidemics, with 100 to 400 million cases worldwide every year, an eightfold increase since 20 years ago, according to the World Health Organization.

A startup in São Paulo, Brazil, one of the countries being hit the hardest by dengue outbreaks, has a possible solution: drones that release sterile male mosquitoes. 

Scientists have previously released sterile mosquitoes in a bid to cut the number of insects being born—and ultimately the number of cases of mosquito-borne diseases. However, they faced the hurdle of getting into the nooks and crannies of the neighborhoods where stagnant water often collects, and mosquitoes lay their eggs. Drones could help them overcome it. Read the full story.

—Jill Langlois

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 The US is suing Apple
Regulators have accused it of abusing its iPhone dominance. (FT $)
+ They’ve been looking into the company’s antitrust record since at least 2019. (The Guardian)
+ The tech giant is having a rough 2024 so far. (NYT $)
+ The lawsuit could force Apple to cooperate better with other smartphone makers. (Vox)

2 The United Nations promise to promote safe, trustworthy AI
But who enforces that, and how, remains to be seen. (WP $)
+ The AI Act is done. Here’s what will (and won’t) change. (MIT Technology Review)

3 What it’s like to receive a brain-computer implant
Jeffrey Keefer, who has Parkinson’s, agreed to having the device temporarily applied to the surface of his brain. (WSJ $)
+ Former Neuralink workers think the firm is taking unnecessary risks. (Vox)
+ How it feels to have a life-changing brain implant removed. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Tragic news stories drove readers to donate thousands of dollars
The only problem is, the victims didn’t exist. (NBC News)
+ Surveillance company Flock Safety claims to have solved 10% of reported US crime. Did it really? (404 Media)

5 We’re still waiting for AI we’re willing to pay for
We enjoy mucking around with generative AI—but we don’t want to fork out to use it. (Bloomberg $)

6 A British-Italian company claims to have discovered a better way to mine bitcoin
But crypto experts smell a rat. (FT $)
+ Ethereum moved to proof of stake. Why can’t Bitcoin? (MIT Technology Review)

7 Brands dependent on TikTok are getting anxious
There isn’t really another app or platform that would generate the same kind of sales. (NYT $)
+ US lawmakers are being targeted by angry TikTok devotees. (WP $)
+ Nvidia is selling its own version of the viral Stanley cup. (Insider $)

8 Care robots haven’t lived up to their hype
In some cases, they can hinder instead of help. (The Atlantic $)
+ Inside Japan’s long experiment in automating elder care. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Theories of reality are seriously confusing
But some of them are much more consequential than others. (New Scientist $)
+ What is death? (MIT Technology Review)

10 How Pixar’s software changed movie making forever
Starting with the stone cold classic Toy Story. (IEEE Spectrum)

Quote of the day

“Buy your mom an iPhone.”

—Apple CEO Tim Cook’s response to a customer complaining they were unable to send their mother certain videos because she used an Android smartphone, the Verge reports.

The big story

How AI is helping historians better understand our past

April 2023

Historians have started using machine learning to examine historical documents, including astronomical tables like those produced in Venice and other early modern cities.

Proponents claim that the application of modern computer science to the past helps draw connections across a broader swath of the historical record than would otherwise be possible, correcting distortions that come from analyzing history one document at a time.

But it introduces distortions of its own, including the risk that machine learning will slip bias or outright falsifications into the historical record. Read the full story.

—Moira Donovan

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ The way sea sponges pump water is really quite amazing.
+ Over in Australia, they’re (almost) mistaking new bug species for bird poo.
+ I never thought I’d be transfixed by a bed making competition, but here we are.
+ Meet the people dedicated to watching films at double-speed.

This week I have a mystery for you. It’s the story of how a team of researchers traced a covid variant in Wisconsin from a wastewater plant to six toilets at a single company. But it’s also a story about privacy concerns that arise when you use sewers to track rare viruses back to their source. 

That virus likely came from a single employee who happened to be shedding an enormous quantity of a very weird variant. The researchers would desperately like to find that person. But what if that person doesn’t want to be found?

A few years ago, Marc Johnson, a virologist at the University of Missouri, became obsessed with weird covid variants he was seeing in wastewater samples. The ones that caught his eye were odd in a couple of different ways: they didn’t match any of the common variants, and they didn’t circulate. They would pop up in a single location, persist for some length of time, and then often disappear—a blip. Johnson found his first blip in Missouri. “It drove me nuts,” he says. “I was like, ‘What the hell was going on here?’” 

Then he teamed up with colleagues in New York, and they found a few more.

Hoping to pin down even more lineages, Johnson put a call out on Twitter (now X) for wastewater. In January 2022, he got another hit in a wastewater sample shipped from a Wisconsin treatment plant. He and David O’Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin, started working with state health officials to track the signal—from the treatment plant to a pumping station and then to the outskirts of the city, “one manhole at a time,” Johnson says. “Every time there was a branch in the road, we would check which branch [the signal] was coming from.”

They chased some questionable leads. The researchers were suspicious the virus might be coming from an animal. At one point O’Connor took people from his lab to a dog park to ask dog owners for poop samples. “There were so many red herrings,” Johnson says.

Finally, after sampling about 50 manholes, the researchers found the manhole, the last one on the branch that had the variant. They got lucky. “The only source was this company,” Johnson says. Their results came out in March in Lancet Microbe. 

Wastewater surveillance might seem like a relatively new phenomenon, born of the pandemic, but it goes back decades. A team of Canadian researchers outlines several historical examples in this story. In one example, a public health official traced a 1946 typhoid outbreak to the wife of a man who sold ice cream at the beach. Even then, the researcher expressed some hesitation. The study didn’t name the wife or the town, and he cautioned that infections probably shouldn’t be traced back to an individual “except in the presence of an outbreak.”

In a similar study published in 1959, scientists traced another typhoid epidemic to one woman, who was then banned from food service and eventually talked into having her gallbladder removed to eliminate the infection. Such publicity can have a “devastating effect on the carrier,” they remarked in their write-up of the case. “From being a quiet and respected citizen, she becomes a social pariah.”

When Johnson and O’Connor traced the virus to that last manhole, things got sticky. Until that point, the researchers had suspected these cryptic lineages were coming from animals. Johnson had even developed a theory involving organic fertilizer from a source further upstream. Now they were down to a single building housing a company with about 30 employees. They didn’t want to stigmatize anyone or invade their privacy. But someone at the company was shedding an awful lot of virus. “Is it ethical to not tell them at that point?” Johnson wondered.

O’Connor and Johnson had been working with state health officials from the very beginning. They decided the best path forward would be to approach the company, explain the situation, and ask if they could offer voluntary testing. The decision wasn’t easy. “We didn’t want to cause panic and say there’s a dangerous new variant lurking in our community,” Ryan Westergaard, the state epidemiologist for communicable diseases at the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, told Nature. But they also wanted to try to help the person who was infected. 

The company agreed to testing, and 19 of its 30 employees turned up for nasal swabs. They were all negative.

That may mean one of the people who didn’t test was carrying the infection. Or could it mean that the massive covid infection in the gut didn’t show up on a nasal swab? “This is where I would use the shrug emoji if we were doing this over email,” O’Connor says.

At the time, the researchers had the ability to test stool samples for the virus, but they didn’t have approval. Now they do, and they’re hoping stool will lead them to an individual infected with one of these strange viruses who can help answer some of their questions. Johnson has identified about 50 of these cryptic covid variants in wastewater. “The more I study these lineages, the more I am convinced that they are replicating in the GI tract,” Johnson says. “It wouldn’t surprise me at all if that’s the only place they were replicating.” 

But how far should they go to find these people? That’s still an open question. O’Connor can imagine a dizzying array of problems that might arise if they did identify an individual shedding one of these rare variants. The most plausible hypothesis is that the lineages arise in individuals who have immune disorders that make it difficult for them to eliminate the infection. That raises a whole host of other thorny questions: what if that person had a compromised immune system due to HIV in addition to the strange covid variant? What if that person didn’t know they were HIV positive, or didn’t want to divulge their HIV status? What if the researchers told them about the infection, but the person couldn’t access treatment? “If you imagine what the worst-case scenarios are, they’re pretty bad,” O’Connor says.

On the other hand, O’Connor says, they think there are a lot of these people around the country and the world. “Isn’t there also an ethical obligation to try to learn what we can so that we can try to help people who are harboring these viruses?” he asks.

Now read the rest of The Checkup

More from MIT Technology Review

Longevity specialists aim to help people live longer and healthier lives. But they have yet to establish themselves as a credible medical field. Expensive longevity clinics that cater to the wealthy worried well aren’t helping. Jessica Hamzelou takes us inside the quest to legitimize longevity medicine.

Drug developers bet big on AI to help speed drug development. But when will we see our first generative drug? Antonio Regalado has the story. 

Read more from MIT Technology Review’s archive

The covid pandemic brought the tension between privacy and public health into sharp relief, wrote Karen Hao in 2020. 

That same year Genevieve Bell argued that we can reimagine contact tracing in a way that protects privacy.

In 2021, Antonio Regalado covered some of the first efforts to track the spread of covid variants using wastewater.  

Earlier this year I wrote about using wastewater to track measles. 

From around the web

Surgeons have transplanted a kidney from a genetically engineered pig into a 62-year-old man in Boston. (New York Times)
→ Surgeons transplanted a similar kidney into a brain-dead patient in 2021. (MIT Technology Review) 
→ Researchers are also looking into how to transplant other organs. Just a few months ago, surgeons connected a genetically engineered pig liver to another brain-dead patient. (MIT Technology Review)

The FDA has approved a new gene therapy for a rare but fatal genetic disorder in children. Its $4.25 million price tag will make it the world’s most expensive medicine, but it promises to give children with the disease a shot at a normal life. (CNN)
→ Read Antonio Regalado’s take on the curse of the costliest drug. (MIT Technology Review)

People who practice intermittent fasting have an increased risk of dying of heart disease, according to new research presented at the American Heart Association meeting in Chicago. There are, of course, caveats. (Washington Post and Stat)

Some parents aren’t waiting to give their young kids the new miracle drug to treat cystic fibrosis. They’re starting the treatment in utero. (The Atlantic) 

How China Got Ahead on EVs

Speakers: Zeyi Yang, China reporter, Amanda Silverman, Features & investigations editor, and Abby Ivory-Ganja, Sr engagement editor

In the race to produce and sell more electric vehicles, China has emerged as the unexpected winner. If you visit Shanghai or Shenzhen today, it feels like half of the cars running on the streets are electric. The burgeoning domestic demand also transformed Chinese auto companies into aggressive challengers in the global auto market. What did China’s government and companies do to achieve this progress? How will that impact auto companies and consumers in the West?

Related Coverage

• How did China come to dominate the world of electric cars?
• Europe is about to crack down on Chinese electric cars
• China’s car companies are turning into tech companies

A startup in São Paulo,  Brazil, one of the countries being hit the hardest by dengue outbreaks, has a possible solution: drones that release sterile male mosquitoes. 

Birdview has previously used drones in agriculture—releasing pest-fighting insects to make it easier to get to every corner of crop fields, which allows farmers to use fewer pesticides.

But in 2021, engineer and founder Ricardo Machado had an idea. He heard about scientists working to prevent diseases like dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya, and zika, all transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which lays its eggs on the surface of stagnant water. 

The scientists were releasing sterile males of the species into communities with high instances of the diseases to mate with females already in the region. It’s a measure intended to curb the females’ reproductive potential, thus leading to fewer mosquitos being born, and ultimately cutting the number of cases of mosquito-borne diseases.

At the time, researchers walked or drove through affected neighborhoods, carrying canisters of sterile males and releasing them into areas that they knew were breeding grounds for mosquitoes. But there was one hurdle they couldn’t overcome: getting into the nooks and crannies of the neighborhoods where stagnant water often collects—the pool in an abandoned backyard, the tires out back at the local mechanic’s shop, the plant pots left at cemeteries.

Machado thought his drones—which could carry 17,000 mosquitoes per 10-minute flight over a 25-acre area—could be the answer to that problem.

“The challenge is getting into those hidden places,” says Machado. “It’s rare that Aedes aegypti breeding areas are found out in the open, like on a sidewalk, because when people see them, they destroy them. But with drones, we can get into areas we just can’t otherwise.”

Birdview has carried out studies with several partners since 2021, including the United Nations, the University of São Paulo (USP), and the state-owned Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), to better understand the effectiveness of releasing the disease-fighting mosquitoes with drones. First they looked at how the mechanism of the drone and outside conditions, like wind turbulence, affected the survival rate of the mosquitoes and their ability to fly.

The results were positive, so they moved on to flight-and-release tests in the Brazilian states of Pernambuco and Paraná, as well as Florida, where they’ve been working with the Lee County Mosquito Control District to see how far the mosquitoes spread upon release. They used the “mark, release and recapture” method, which involves sterile male mosquitoes being marked with a certain color before being released and later recaptured with traps so the team could see how far they had flown. They also set traps where eggs could be laid and monitored. 

“From what we’ve seen so far, our method seems to be working well,” says Machado. 

This isn’t the only attempt to use drones for the dispersal of disease-fighting mosquitoes—one team ran similar studies in Brazil’s northeast after the region saw an outbreak of zika in 2015 and 2016 that led to 3,308 babies being born with birth defects, and another is carrying out EU-funded tests in France and Spain. 

Birdview is now negotiating with different biofactories, or insectaries, that sterilize male Aedes aegypti and with others that create what are called Wolbachia mosquitoes—Aedes aegypti injected with the Wolbachia bacteria can no longer transmit viruses like dengue—in hopes of creating partnerships so it can bring its technology to other countries.

“The mosquito is the deadliest animal in the world,” says Machado. “We want to work with as many insectaries as possible. This doesn’t have to be used just to fight the Aedes aegypti mosquito and the diseases it spreads. It can be used to fight malaria too.”

But for some experts, scaling up Birdview’s model and getting that technology to other countries—especially those that are low and middle-income—could become an obstacle.

“It’s a method that sounds promising, but we still need to better understand the costs involved,” says Neelika Malavige, head of Dengue Global Program and Scientific Affairs at the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi). “We need to know how affordable it will be to use this technology and how it can be relocated to other countries.”

Machado says the UN has previously given financial support to low-income countries for similar projects and hopes that it and other organizations will continue to do the same with this one.

He also notes the importance of decentralizing the work done with the drones by training at least one pilot per community using the mosquito-releasing technology.

“We don’t want anybody to have to rely on Birdview or any other company to do this work,” says Machado. “We want to be able to hand them the tools they need so they can be the ones to protect their own communities.”

There is a new most expensive drug in the world. Price tag: $4.25 million

The news: There is a new most expensive drug ever—a gene therapy that costs as much as a Brooklyn brownstone or a Miami mansion, and more than the average person will earn in a lifetime. Lenmeldy is a gene treatment for metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD) and was approved in the US on Monday. Its maker, Orchard Therapeutics, says the $4.25 million wholesale cost reflects the value the treatment has for patients and families.

Why it matters:  MLD is a nerve disorder that strikes toddlers, quickly robbing them of their ability to speak and walk. Around half die, the others live on in a vegetative state. But it’s incredibly rare, affecting only around 40 kids a year in the US. The extreme rarity of such diseases is what’s behind the soaring price-tags of new gene therapies, and why selling the newest DNA treatment could be a shaky business. Read the full story.

—Antonio Regalado

New York City’s plan to stop e-bike battery fires

Walk just a few blocks in New York City and you’ll likely spot an electric bike zipping by. They have become increasingly popular in recent years, especially among delivery drivers. But the e-bike influx has caused a wave of fires sparked by their batteries, some of them deadly.

Now, the city wants to fight those fires with battery swapping. A pilot program will provide a small number of delivery drivers with alternative options to power up their e-bikes, including swapping stations that supply fully charged batteries on demand. 

Proponents say the program could lay the groundwork for a new mode of powering small electric vehicles in the city, one that’s convenient and could reduce the risk of fires. But the road to fire safety will likely be long and winding given the sheer number of batteries we’re integrating into our daily lives, in e-bikes and beyond. Read the full story.

—Casey Crownhart

To learn more about New York City’s battery swapping ambitions, check out the latest edition of The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate and energy newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Reddit is set to go public today
Its vocal users have wreaked havoc on Wall Street in the past. Will they again? (Bloomberg $)
+ Redditors are understandably wary of what the future could hold. (WP $)
+ That future is increasingly looking like it’ll involve a lot of AI. (The Information $)
+ It’s one of the few online spaces that still fosters community. (NYT $) 

2 Neuralink shared a video of its first patient playing games with his brain implant
Noland Arbaugh, who is quadriplegic, called the surgical procedure “super easy.” (The Verge)
+ But he also acknowledged that the chip wasn’t perfect. (Insider $)
+ Elon Musk wants more bandwidth between people and machines. Do we need it? (MIT Technology Review)

3 Russian disinformation campaigns are rippling across Europe
Its deepfake videos are designed to erode public trust ahead of the European parliament elections in June. (FT $)
+ Eric Schmidt has a 6-point plan for fighting election misinformation. (MIT Technology Review)

4 The ‘room-temperature superconductor’ physicist engaged in research misconduct
At least four papers co-written by Ranga Dias have now been retracted by the journals that published them. (WSJ $)

5 The US government has awarded its biggest chip grant to date
Intel is the lucky recipient of $8.5 billion to build and expand its US facilities. (NYT $)
+ Intel’s planning to spend an eye watering $100 billion in total. (Reuters)

6 A record number of people died trying to enter to US in 2022
Surveillance has a body count. (The Verge)
+ The new US border wall is an app. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Wherever you go, you’re being tracked across the web
But you might not realize just how extensive that tracking really is. (Wired $)

8 Poverty porn is YouTube’s latest fixation
It treats deprivation as depressing shock-content. (Vox)

9 China is betting on these spacecraft to collect moon samples
While one has already launched, another four are set to follow. (IEEE Spectrum)

10 Fitbit’s future is looking increasingly uncertain
Die-hard fans are losing patience with its owner Google’s recent changes. (Ars Technica)

Quote of the day

“I can’t wait to short the s*** outta this!”

—A Reddit user reacts to the news of the company’s IPO on the infamous r/wallstreetbets Subreddit, Vox reports.

The big story

Running Tide is facing scientist departures and growing concerns over seaweed sinking for carbon removal

June 2022

Running Tide, an aquaculture company based in Portland, Maine, hopes to set tens of thousands of tiny floating kelp farms adrift in the North Atlantic. The idea is that the fast-growing macroalgae will eventually sink to the ocean floor, storing away thousands of tons of carbon dioxide in the process.

The company has raised millions in venture funding and gained widespread media attention. But it struggled to grow kelp along rope lines in the open ocean during initial attempts last year and has lost a string of scientists in recent months, sources with knowledge of the matter tell MIT Technology Review. What happens next? Read the full story.

—James Temple

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ Aww, this duck is absolutely adorable
+ Hiking in India seems a pretty worthwhile way to spend your time.
+ Kim Gordon and Chloe Sevigny: two people who know a thing or two about being cool.
+ These behind the scenes shots of A Streetcar Named Desire are very cool.

Spend enough time in a city and you’ll get to know its unique soundscape. In New York City, it features the echoes of car stereos, the deep grumbles of garbage truck engines, and, increasingly, the high-pitched whirring of electric bikes.

E-bikes and scooters are becoming a staple across the city’s boroughs, and e-bikes in particular are especially popular among the tens of thousands of delivery workers who zip through the streets.

On a recent cloudy afternoon in Manhattan, I joined a few dozen of them at a sign-up event for a new city program that aims to connect delivery drivers with new charging technologies. Drivers who enroll in the pilot will have access to either fast chargers or battery swapping stations for six months.

It’s part of the city’s efforts to cut down on the risk of battery fires, some of which have been sparked by e-bike batteries charging inside apartment buildings, according to the fire department. For more on the program and how it might help address fires, check out my latest story. In the meantime, here’s what I heard from delivery drivers and the startups at the kickoff event.

On a windy late-February day, I wove my way through the lines of delivery workers who showed up to the event in Manhattan’s Cooper Square. Some of them straddled their bikes in line, while others propped up their bikes in clusters. Colorful bags sporting the logos of various delivery services sprouted from their cargo racks.

City officials worked at tables under tents, assigning riders to one of the three startups that are partnering with the city for the new program. One company, Swiftmile, is building fast-charging bike racks for drivers. The other two, Popwheels and Swobbee, are aiming to bring battery swapping to the city.

Battery swapping is a growing technology in some parts of the world, but it’s not common in the US, so I was especially intrigued by the two companies who had set up battery swap cabinets.

Swobbee runs a small network of swapping stations around the world, including at its base in Germany. It is retrofitting bikes to accommodate its battery, which attaches to the rear of the bike. Popwheels is taking a slightly different approach, providing batteries that are already compatible with the majority of e-bikes delivery drivers use today, with little modification required.

I watched a Popwheels employee demonstrate the company’s battery swapping station to several newly enrolled drivers. Each one would approach the Popwheels cabinet, which is roughly the size and shape of a bookcase and has 16 numbered metal doors on the front. After they made a few taps on their smartphone, a door would swing open. Inside, there was space to slide in a used battery and a cord to plug into it. Once the battery was in the cabinet and the door had been shut, another door would open, revealing a fully charged e-bike battery the rider could unplug and slide out. Presto!

The whole process took just a minute or two—much quicker than waiting for a battery to charge. It’s similar to picking up a package from an automated locker in an upscale apartment building.

The crowd seemed to grow during the two hours I spent at the event, and the line stretched and squeezed closer to the edge of the sidewalk. I made a comment about the turnout to Baruch Herzfeld, Popwheels’ CEO and co-founder. “This is nothing,” he said. “There’s demand for 100,000 batteries in New York tomorrow.”

Indeed, New York City has roughly 60,000 delivery workers, many of whom rely on e-bikes to get around. And commuters and tourists might be interested in small, electrified vehicles. Meeting anything close to that sort of demand will take a whole lot more battery cabinets, as one can service just up to 50 riders, according to Popwheels’ estimates.

After they’d signed up and seen the battery swap demo, drivers who were ready to take batteries with them wheeled their bikes over to a few more startup employees, who helped make a slight tweak to a rail under their seats for the company’s batteries to slide into. Some adjustments required a bit of elbow grease, but I watched as one rider slid his new, freshly charged battery into place. He hopped on his bike and darted off into the bike lane, integrating into the flow of traffic.

Now read the rest of The Spark

Related reading

For more on the city’s plans for battery swapping and how they might cut fire risk, give my latest story a read.

Gogoro, one of our 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch in 2023, operates a huge network of battery swapping stations for electric scooters, largely in Asia.

Some companies think battery swapping is an option for larger electric vehicles, too. Here’s how one startup wants to use modular, swappable batteries to get more EVs on the road.

STEPHANIE ARNETT/MITTR | SCOPEX (BALLOON)

Another thing

Harvard researchers have given up on a long-running effort to conduct a solar geoengineering experiment. 

The idea behind the technique is a simple one: scatter particles in the upper atmosphere to scatter sunlight, counteracting global warming. But related research efforts have sparked controversy. Read more in my colleague James Temple’s latest story.

Keeping up with climate  

The Biden administration finalized strict new rules for vehicle tailpipe emissions. Under the regulations, EVs are expected to make up over half of new vehicle sales by 2030. (NPR)

The first utility-scale offshore wind farm in the US is officially up and running. It’s a bright spot that could signal a turning point for the industry. (Canary Media)

→ Here’s what’s next for offshore wind. (MIT Technology Review)

The UK has big plans for heat pumps, but installations aren’t moving nearly fast enough, according to a new report. Installations need to increase more than tenfold to keep pace with goals. (The Guardian)

States across the US are proposing legislation to ban lab-grown meat. It’s the latest escalation in an increasingly weird battle over a product that basically doesn’t exist yet. (Wired)

Low-cost EVs from Chinese automakers are pushing US-based companies to reconsider their electrification strategy. More affordable EV options? A girl can dream. (Bloomberg)

→ EV prices in the US are inching down, approaching parity with gas-powered vehicles. (Washington Post)

Goodbye greenwashing, hello “greenhushing”! Corporations are increasingly going radio silent on climate commitments. (Inside Climate News)

The Summer Olympics are fast approaching, and organizers in Paris are working to reduce the event’s climate impact. Think fewer new buildings, more bike lanes. (New York Times)

Early springs mean cherry blossoms are blooming earlier than ever. Warmer winters in the future could cause an even bigger problem. (Bloomberg)

Lenmeldy is a gene treatment for metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD) and was approved in the U.S. on Monday. Its maker, Orchard Therapeutics, said today the $4.25 million wholesale cost reflects the value the treatment has for patients and families.

No doubt, MLD is awful. The nerve disorder strikes toddlers, quickly robbing them of their ability to speak and walk. Around half die, the others live on in a vegetative state causing crushing burdens for families.

But it’s also incredibly rare, affecting only around 40 kids a year in the U.S. The extreme rarity of such diseases is what’s behind the soaring price-tags of new gene therapies. Just consider the economics: Orchard employs 160 people, much more than the number of kids they’ll be able to treat over several years.

AMY PRICE

It means even at this price, selling the newest DNA treatment could be a shaky business. “Gene therapies have struggled commercially—and I wouldn’t expect Lenmeldy to buck that trend,” says Maxx Chatsko, founder of Solt DB, which gathers data about biotech products..  

Call it the curse of being the world’s most expensive drug.

The MLD therapy was approved in Europe starting three years ago, where its price is somewhat lower, but Chatsko notes that Orchard generated only $12.7 million from product sales during most of last year. It means you can count the number of kids who got it on your hands.

There’s no doubt the treatment is a lifesaver. The gene therapy adds a missing gene to the bone marrow cells of children, reversing the condition’s root cause in the brain. Many of the kids who got it, in trials that began in 2010, have been growing up to be beautifully average.

“My heart wants to talk about what an effect this therapy has had in these children,” says Orchard’s chief medical officer, Leslie Meltzer. “Without it, they will die very young or live for many years in a vegetative state.” But kids who get the gene therapy, mostly end up being able to walk and do well cognitively “The ones we treat are going to school, they’re playing sports, and are able to tell their stories,” Meltzer says.

Independent groups also think the drug could be cost-effective. One, called the Institute for Clinical and Economic review, and which assesses the value of drugs, said last September that the MLD gene therapy was worth it at a cost between $2.3 and $3.9 million, according to their models.

But there’s no denying that super-high prices can signal that a treatment isn’t economically sustainable. 

One prior title holder for most expensive drug, the gene therapy Glybera, was purchased only once before being retired from the market. It didn’t work well enough to justify the $1 million price tag, which made it the price champion at the time.

Then there’s the treatment that’s been reigning as the costliest until today, when Lenmeldy took over. It’s a $3.5 million hemophilia treatment called Hemegenix, which is also a gene therapy. Such treatments were meant to be generate billions in sales, yet they aren’t getting nearly the uptake you’d expect according to news reports.

Orchard itself gave up on another DNA fix, Strimvelis, which was an out-and-out cure for a type of immune deficiency. It owned the gene therapy and even got it approved in Europe. The issue was both too few patients and the existence of an alternative treatment. Not even a money back guarantee could save Strimvelis, which Orchard discontinued in 2022.

Orchard was subsequently bought by Japanese drug company Kyowa Kirin, of which it’s now a subsidiary. 

So it can seem like even though gene-therapies are hitting home runs in trials, they’re losing the ballgame. In the case of this Lenmeldy, the critical issue will be early testing for the disease. That’s because once children display symptoms, it can be too late. For now, many patients are being discovered only because an older sibling has already succumbed to the inherited condition.

In 2016, MIT Technology Review recounted the dramatic effects of the MLD gene therapy, but also the heartbreak for parents as one child would die in order to save another.   

Orchard says it hopes to solve this problem by getting on the list of diseases automatically tested for at birth, something that could secure their market, and save many more children. A decision on testing, advocates say, could be reached following a May meeting of the U.S. government committee on newborn screening.

Among those cheering for the treatment is Amy Price, a rare disease advocate who runs her own consultancy, Rarralel, in Denver. Price had three children with MLD—one who died, but two who were saved by the MLD gene therapy, which they received starting in 2011, when it was in testing.

Price says her two treated kids, now in their tweens and teens, “are totally ordinary, absolutely average.” And that is worth the price, she says. “The economic burden of an untreated child….exceeds any gene therapy prices so far,” she says. “That reality is hard to understand when people want to react to the price alone.”

The 12 months leading up to the debacle had seen countless manufacturing, production, and shipping snags, thanks to the covid-19 pandemic. The upheaval illuminated the critical role of supply chains in consumers’ everyday lives—nothing, from baby formula to fresh produce to ergonomic office chairs, seemed safe.

For companies producing just about any physical product, the many “black swan” events (catastrophic incidents that are nearly impossible to predict) of the last four years illustrate the importance of supply chain resilience—businesses’ ability to anticipate, respond, and bounce back. Yet many organizations still don’t have robust measures in place for future setbacks.

In a poll of 250 business leaders conducted by MIT Technology Review Insights in partnership with Infosys Cobalt, just 12% say their supply chains are in a “fully modern, integrated” state. Almost half of respondents’ firms (47%) regularly experience some supply chain disruptions—nearly one in five (19%) say they feel “constant pressure,” and 28% experience
“occasional disruptions.” A mere 6% say disruptions aren’t an issue. But there’s hope on the horizon. In 2024, rapidly advancing technologies are making transparent, collaborative, and data-driven supply chains more realistic.

“Emerging technologies can play a vital role in creating more sustainable and circular supply chains,” says Dinesh Rao, executive vice president and co-head of delivery at digital services and consulting company Infosys. “Recent strides in artificial intelligence and machine learning, blockchain, and other systems will help build the ability to deliver future-ready, resilient supply chains.”

This content was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff.

The vehicles have become increasingly popular in recent years, especially among delivery drivers, tens of thousands of whom weave through New York streets. But the e-bike influx has caused a wave of fires sparked by their batteries, some of them deadly.

Now, the city wants to fight those fires with battery swapping. A pilot program will provide a small number of delivery drivers with alternative options to power up their e-bikes, including swapping stations that supply fully charged batteries on demand. 

Proponents say the program could lay the groundwork for a new mode of powering small electric vehicles in the city, one that’s convenient and could reduce the risk of fires. But the road to fire safety will likely be long and winding given the sheer number of batteries we’re integrating into our daily lives, in e-bikes and beyond.

A swapping solution

The number of fires caused by batteries in New York City increased nearly ninefold between 2019 and 2023, according to reporting from The City. Concern over fires has been steadily growing, and in March 2023 Mayor Eric Adams announced a plan to address the problem that included regulations for e-bikes and their batteries, crackdowns on unsafe charging practices, and outreach for delivery drivers.

While batteries can catch fire for a variety of reasons, many incidents appear to have been caused by e-bike drivers charging their batteries in apartment buildings, including a February blaze that killed one person and injured 22.

The city’s most recent effort, designed to address charging, is a pilot program for delivery drivers who use e-bikes. For six months, 100 drivers will be matched with one of three startups that will provide a charging solution that doesn’t involve plugging in batteries in apartment buildings.

One of the startups, Swiftmile, is building fast charging stations that look like bike racks and can charge an e-bike battery within two hours. The other two participating companies, Popwheels and Swobbee, are proposing a different, even quicker solution: battery swapping. Instead of plugging in a battery and waiting for it to power up, a rider can swap out a dead battery for a fresh one.

Battery swapping is already being used for some electric vehicles, largely across Asia. Chinese automaker Nio operates a network of battery swapping stations that can equip a car with a fresh battery in just under three minutes. Gogoro, one of MIT Technology Review’s 2023 Climate Tech Companies to Watch, has a network of battery swapping stations for electric scooters that can accommodate more than 400,000 swaps each day.

The concept will need to be adjusted for New York and for delivery drivers, says Baruch Herzfeld, co-founder and CEO of Popwheels. “But if we get it right,” he says, “we think everybody in New York will be able to use light electric vehicles.”

Existing battery swap networks like Nio’s have mostly included a single company’s equipment, giving the manufacturer control over the vehicle, battery, and swapping equipment. That’s because one of the keys to making battery swapping work is fleet commonality—a base of many vehicles that can all use the same system.

Fortunately, delivery drivers have formed something of a de facto fleet in New York City, says David Hammer, co-founder and president of Popwheels. Roughly half of the city’s 60,000-plus delivery workers rely on e-bikes, according to city estimates. Many of them use bikes from a brand called Arrow, which include removable batteries.

Convenience is key for delivery drivers working on tight schedules. “For a lot of people, battery charging, battery swapping, it’s just technology. But for [delivery workers], it’s their livelihood,” says Irene Figueroa-Ortiz, a policy advisor at the NYC Department of Transportation.

For the New York pilot, Popwheels is building battery cabinets in several locations throughout the city that will include 16 charging slots for e-bike batteries. Riders will open a cabinet door using a smartphone app, plug in the used battery and take a fresh one from another slot. Based on the company’s modeling, each cabinet should be able to support constant use by 40 to 50 riders, Hammer says.

“Maybe it leads to an even larger vision of battery swapping as a part of an urban future,” Hammer says. “But for now, it’s solving a very real and immediate problem that delivery workers have around how they can work a full day, and earn a reasonable living, and do it without having to put their lives at risk for battery fires.”

A growing problem

Lithium-ion batteries power products from laptops and cellphones to electric vehicles, including cars, trucks, and e-bikes. A major benefit of the battery chemistry is its energy density, or ability to pack a lot of energy into a small container. But all that stored energy can also be dangerous.

Batteries can catch fire during charging or use, and even while being stored. Generally, fires happen when temperatures around the battery rise to unsafe levels or if a physical problem in a battery causes a short circuit, allowing current to flow unchecked. These factors can set in motion a dangerous process called thermal runaway.

Most batteries include a battery management system to control charging, which prevents temperatures from spiking and sparking a fire. But if this system malfunctions or if a battery doesn’t include one, charging can lead to fires, says Ben Hoff, who leads fire safety engineering and hardware design at Popwheels.

Some of the delivery drivers who attended a sign-up event for New York’s charging pilot program in late February cited safety as a reason they were looking for alternative solutions for their batteries. “Of course, I worry about that,” Jose Sarmiento, a longtime delivery worker, said at the event. “Even when I’m sleeping, I’m thinking about the battery.”  

Battery swapping could also be a key to safer electric transit, Popwheels’ Hammer says. The company has tight control over the batteries it provides drivers, and its monitoring systems include temperature sensors installed in the charging cabinets. Charging can be shut down immediately if a battery starts to overheat, and an aerosol fire suppression system can slow a fire if one does happen to start inside a cabinet.

The batteries Popwheels provides are also UL-certified, meaning they’re required to pass third-party safety tests. New York City banned the sale of uncertified batteries and e-bikes last year, but many drivers still use them, Hammer says.

Low-quality batteries are more likely to cause fires, a problem that can often be traced to the manufacturing process, says Michael Pecht, a professor at the University of Maryland who studies the reliability and safety of electronic devices.

Battery manufacturing facilities should be as clean as a medical operating room or a semiconductor facility, Pecht explains. Contamination from dust and dirt that wind up in batteries can create problems over time as charging and discharging a battery causes small physical changes. After enough charging cycles, even a tiny dust particle can lead to a short circuit that sparks a fire.

Low-quality manufacturing makes battery fires more likely, but it’s a daunting task to keep tight control over the huge number of cells being made each year. Large manufacturers can produce billions of batteries annually, making the solution to battery fires a complex one, Pecht says: “I think there’s a group who want an easy answer. To me, the answer is not that easy.”

New programs that provide well-manufactured batteries and tightly control charging could make a dent in safety concerns. But real progress will require quick and dramatic scale-up, alongside regulations and continual outreach to communities. 

Popwheels would need to install hundreds of its battery swapping cabinets to support a significant fraction of the city’s delivery drivers. The pilot will help determine whether riders are willing to use new methods of powering their livelihood. As Hammer says, “If they don’t use it, it doesn’t matter.”