College freshman Dexter Greene and Microsoft research manager Richard Black discuss how technology that stores data in glass is supporting students as they expand earlier efforts to communicate what it means to be human to extraterrestrials.

Learn more:

• Avenues: The World School — Golden Record 2.0
• Project homepage
• Golden Record: Overview
• NASA Science
• Project Silica
• Project homepage
• Sealed in glass
• Microsoft Unlocked innovation story, 2023
• Optics for the cloud: storage in the zettabyte era with Dr. Ant Rowstron and Mark Russinovich
• Microsoft Research Podcast, November 2019
• Project Silica proof of concept stores Warner Bros. ‘Superman’ movie on quartz glass
• Microsoft Source blog, November 2019

Model maker and fabricator Lex Story helps bring research to life through prototyping. He discusses his take on failure; the encouragement and advice that has supported his pursuit of art and science; and the sabbatical that might inspire his next career move.

Learn more:

• Microsoft Premonition
• Project Eclipse
• Project PRISM
• 3D Telemedicine
• Jacdac
• Audio Devices

In this episode, Microsoft Product Manager Shrey Jain and OpenAI Research Scientist Zoë Hitzig join host Amber Tingle to discuss “Personhood credentials: Artificial intelligence and the value of privacy-preserving tools to distinguish who is real online.” In their paper, Jain, Hitzig, and their coauthors describe how malicious actors can draw on increasingly advanced AI tools to carry out deception, making online deception harder to detect and more harmful. Bringing ideas from cryptography into AI policy conversations, they identify a possible mitigation: a credential that allows its holder to prove they’re a person––not a bot––without sharing any identifying information. This exploratory research reflects a broad range of collaborators from across industry, academia, and the civil sector specializing in areas such as security, digital identity, advocacy, and policy.