These days, it's hard not to view Google as a villain. The monopoly is currently engaged in a mission to dismantle the internet as we know it, scraping information from websites and turning it into frequently inaccurate AI nonsense. It's a mission that will likely kill off most of the websites it's feeding on. But it's not all bad. Google's also raising an army of 32 million mosquitoes that it's hoping to unleash upon America.
I know this sounds more like something an over-the-top videogame antagonist might be planning—like Metal Gear Solid's hornet-loving weirdo, The Pain—but actually Google is doing some good here by attempting to reduce the threat posed by the world's most dangerous animal, as reported by The Guardian.
Mosquitos carry a variety of diseases, not least of which is malaria. Around 700 million people a year are victims of mosquito-transmitted diseases, and around a million people die every year from their nasty little bites. When I lived in Zimbabwe, taking malaria tablets every morning became as normal and mundane as putting on my socks.
This is where Google's Debug project comes in. The aforementioned army of mosquitoes are exclusively male—which don't bite or carry these deadly diseases—and Google wants to unleash them upon California and Florida in two waves of 16 million. When they're out in the wild, they will mate with female mosquitoes, but due to a bacteria the males have been infected with, wolbachia, the females' eggs won't hatch.
"Over time," Debug states, "there will be fewer and fewer bad mosquitoes." The project also emphasises that this is a natural solution. "This technique uses a naturally occurring bacteria and uses no chemicals, no toxins and doesn’t involve genetic modification. Similar approaches have been used to safely combat other pests for decades. We’re combining the Debug team's scientific and engineering expertise with the help of international partners to raise and release lots of good bugs and stop bad mosquitoes that can spread disease."
This is all good stuff, and built on decades of research as well as the well-trodden sterile insect technique, which has already been used on other troublesome bugs. Google even found a positive way to use AI, which helps Debug separate male and female mosquitoes and release the males in appropriate locations and in the right numbers.
It's almost like AI could be a force for good if it wasn't so busy plagiarising content and having wild delusions.
As The Guardian notes, Debug has already done this in Singapore, initially working with the country's Nation Environment Agency to release 6 million male mosquitoes a week—the number has since risen to 10 million. This has resulted in a "70% reduction in dengue incidents after 6 to 12 months of releases".
This is genuine life-saving work, which makes it slightly harder to hate Google. But I think I can still manage it.
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