And that could be the sound that will rescue the travel business, at least when it comes to airlines.

Labradors and Cocker Spaniels are being trained to sniff out the presence of COVID-19 in people who don't know they have it.

Later, we'll hear about the latest way to persuade reluctant passengers that it's safe to

get on the plane. But that's not the only novel way of dealing with the novel virus. Smartphones,

thermal scanning, drones, and facial recognition aren't all that new. But other devices are

like buzzing bracelets to maintain social distancing and apps for contact tracing.

Technology is always ready to change our lives for better or worse.

Amy Webb is a futurist on the faculty of NYU's Stern School of Business,

author most recently of The Big Nine,

How the Tech Titans and their Thinking Machines

Could Warp Humanity. Welcome as always.

Thanks for having me back, Warren.

So what are the new risks posed by the effort to social distance and contact, trace,

and all the other things that are now required because of the

pandemic?

Well, I think the pandemic is really playing to the strengths of what I call the big nine

technology companies.

And these are the tech companies that control the sort of lion's share of capital, the patents,

they attract the top talent and supply the frameworks and the technologies that are, the patents, they attract the top talent, and supply the frameworks and the

technologies that are, you know, currently and will be for the foreseeable future artificial

intelligence. In the United States, those are Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, and

Facebook, and in China, they are Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent.

...