The Antidisciplinarian #2: MIT TechReview’s 10 breakthrough technologies, friendly cobots, brain metaphors and ride hailing emissions…

In this week dominated by Covid-19 I found two articles particularly illuminating, one from an expected source and one from a very unexpected source. The first is an HBR article by my BCG colleagues Martin Reeves, Niki Lang and Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak. It is a very thought through and insightful piece on how business should approach and react to the virus. What stroke me, while reading it, is that actually most of the recommendations apply to normal times as well and would make each company (much) better, beyond this time of crisis…

The second one in instead is a letter by the Principal of my former High School in Milan! I would have never thought I would be mentioning him here, but he wrote an extremely compelling missive to the student body. It starts with Manzoni and The Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi) and finishes talking about the greatest risks in such events, “…the poisoning of social life and human relationships, along with the barbarism of civilian life…”. It is a five minutes read, definitely worth it. 

Enough Corona for today! A few highlights of this second issue of The Antidisciplinarian: 

●      MIT's 10 breakthrough technologies skip the viral gadgetry and hype and focus on tech that will make a veritable impact within the next few years.

●      Retail workers have mixed feelings about sharing the floor with tireless robots - that's why robotics companies are trying very hard to make cobots as friendly as possible.

●      There was the telephone theory of the brain, the electrical field theory of the brain, and recently we've been comparing the brain to a computer. Some neuroscientists think we should stay away from the metaphors.

●      Think ride-hailing is good for the planet? A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists demonstrates how companies like Uber and Lyft are leaving 69% more emissions than the trips they displace.

●      IoT is making an impact in the home and in the factory. What about in the wild? TechRepublic covers IoT projects that are keeping wildlife safe from poachers.

●      One company is creating "Ironman AR" for firefighters, using AI, augmented reality, and a thermal camera to allow users to see through smoke.

...along with a number of other enlightening reads

Human and Machine

10 Breakthrough Technologies 2020

Every year MIT publishes 10 technologies they believe will make a real-world impact - no viral gadgets. Some technologies from the list are available now, or will be this year (side note - the imagery in this piece is fantastic):

●      Hyper-personalized medicine (now): Personalized drugs that tackle "too rare to care" (or "n-of-1") cases - extremely rare diseases with no treatment.

●      Tiny AI (now): Tiny AI is helping combat the massive carbon emissions and privacy issues stemming from training and hosting massive AI models in the cloud. "Tech giants and academic researchers are working on new algorithms to shrink existing deep-learning models without losing their capabilities."

●      Digital money (this year): "Days after Facebook’s announcement, an official from the People’s Bank of China implied that it would speed the development of its own digital currency."

●      Climate change attribution (now): A number of advances have "allowed scientists to state with increasing statistical certainty that yes, global warming is often fueling more dangerous weather events."

●      Differential privacy (this year): This year, to help keep data on 330M residents private, the US Census Bureau will employ a mathematical technique called differential privacy, which measure "how much privacy increases when noise is added" to a dataset.

Should Robots Have a Face?

"Programmed to detect spills and debris in the aisles, the robot looked like an inkjet printer with a long neck."

When a Giant store employee put some googly eyes on a spill/debris-detection robot, parent grocery company Ahold Delhaize loved the idea enough to make it standard for its 500 robots across the US. Being "less-daunting" is a benefit not just for uneasy customers, but store employees feeling the pressure of automation. Comfort factor is so important in the industry that Walmart spent months with Bossa Nova and Carnegie Mellon researchers to design shelf-scanning robots that looked and acted friendly.

Jeff Gee, a co-founder at Simbe Robotics, which developed a robot that features blinking eyes for Giant Eagle grocery stores, says it's especially important to add friendly features "where a lot of people have never experienced robots in the wild before."

Creativity

Sketchfab Launches Public Domain Program So Museums Can Share Cultural Relics in 3D

If you're not familiar with Sketchfab, it's a popular site for 3D artists to showcase and sell their work, as well as embed 3D models in browsers.The company has launched a new program to help museums share 3D objects of cultural heritage sites under a creative commons license. The partnership, which spans 27 organizations across 13 countries, is part of a movement to digitally preserve historical sites and artifacts using 3D scanning, spearheaded by researchers like the late Andrew Tallon and organizations like CyArk.

Why Your Brain Is Not a Computer

"By viewing the brain as a computer that passively responds to inputs and processes data, we forget that it is an active organ."

Neuroscience labs around the world are producing ever-growing mountains of data - but is it making our brain easier to grok? Researchers The Guardian spoke to actually think it's making things harder: "all sense of global understanding is in acute danger of getting washed away" ... "obtaining deep understanding from this onslaught will require... substantial advances in data analysis methods."

A heavy reliance on capturing data partly stems from the metaphor of the brain as a computer: "We have... had telephone theories, electrical field theories and now theories based on computing machines and automatic rudders. I suggest we are more likely to find out about how the brain works by studying the brain itself," writes one neuroscientist.

Life Sciences

Coronavirus Is the First Big Test for Futuristic Tech That Can Prevent Pandemics

The COVID-19 crisis has spurred the use of emerging technology to help quell the spread of the infectious disease. For example, China is shipping robots from Danish company UVD Robots to its hospitals to disinfect patient rooms, and Chinese facial recognition company SenseTime now boasts that it can detect faces wearing surgical masks. For a more nuanced read on the subject see CNBC's piece on why robotic medicine innovation - and practical application - is difficult on the eve of pandemic.

(Important side note: Bloomberg's Fully Charged newsletter recently highlighted the sensitive nature of promoting tech at this time: "when more than 88,000 people are infected with the virus, any related marketing can feel indelicate." Kara Swisher's NY Times piece - How Will Tech Help in a Time of Pandemic? - also does a good job of emphasizing the need to take a step back and consider both sides.)

Spaces

Think Ride Sharing Is Good for the Planet? Not So Fast

Nonprofit research group Union of Concerned Scientists released a landmark report on Tuesday that demonstrated how ride-hailing services may account for "13% of all vehicle traffic in major downtown areas." Instead of replacing cars, Uber or Lyft actually increase the number of car trips, and in turn "our collective carbon footprint, causing an estimated 69% more emissions than the trips they displace."

The report suggests several solutions: "ride-sharing services could electrify their fleets, improve the pricing and convenience of pooled rides, and encourage the use of public transit by providing 'first- and last-mile connections' that only replace the part of the journey that a train or bus won’t cover."

The Scariest Thing About Self-Driving Cars Is How Little They Actually Drive Themselves

"If you own a car with partial automation, you do not own a self-driving car. So don’t pretend that you do."

People are still uneasy about autonomous vehicles. A 2019 report by AAA highlighted that 71% of respondents were afraid of self-driving cars. The fear has been fueled by a general lack of understanding of autonomous capabilities, several unfortunate accidents, and a disconnect between regulators and tech companies. The Outline takes a particularly critical look at Tesla's public education of its Autopilot feature - and the industry's subdued rush-to-market.

Materials

New Study Explains Why Superconductivity Takes Place in Graphene

A few years ago researchers found that two sheets of graphene (a 2D grid of carbon atoms) laid on top of each other and twisted at a certain angle become superconductive. This state occurred at a few degrees above absolute zero; achieving the state at room temperature would be a "holy grail of physics" - "it would allow operating computers with radically smaller energy consumption than today." Phys.org covers a new study that demonstrates how superconductivity can be achieved at much higher temperatures.

The Internet of Wild Things: Technology and the Battle Against Biodiversity Loss and Climate Change

TechRepublic's deep dive explores IoT's potential in helping protect vulnerable ecosystems, including the new technologies powering these systems. The Zoological Society of London, for example, uses a monitoring system composed of sensors, cameras, low-power radio networks, and satellite tech to record real-time information on wildlife and habitat changes, and warn of illegal poaching activity. TrailGuard AI, created by DC-based nonprofit RESOLVE, is another camera-based anti-poaching system that aims to assist rangers in large parks.

Processors

We're Not Prepared for the End of Moore's Law

Prominent computer scientists like parallel computing pioneer Charles Leiserson and tech leaders like Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang have pronounced the end of Moore's Law. But MIT Technology Review notes that "it’s been more a gradual decline than a sudden death." Jim Keller, Intel's silicon engineering head, remarked that if people were right about Moore's Law when he took over the SVP position in 2018, it would be a "drag... a really bad career move."

But Keller is now in charge of 8,000 hardware engineers and chip designers at Intel, and he's more optimistic: "if software developers are clever, we could get chips that are a hundred times faster in 10 years." Others like economist Neil Thompson believe the focus on specialized chips is causing "chips for more general computing [to become] a backwater," slowing the overall pace of computing improvement.

Interfaces

How Virtual Reality Is Changing the Live Music Experience

Over the past two years, VR concert startup MelodyVR has worked with over 850 artists to pack its platform with content. In 2020 they'll start offering live-streamed concerts, filmed with their own custom-designed camera. In addition, the company is promising a $20 smartphone-based VR headset for use with its app.

Besides MelodyVR, you might want to check out other apps in the space: Oculus Venues, NextVR, Noys VR, and Wave.

Innovative Edge-Finding AR Eyepiece Lets Firefighters See Through Smoke

Qwake Technologies is developing "Ironman AR for firefighters" - an augmented reality heads-up displays that leverages AI and an onboard thermal camera to highlight objects and people through smoke. CEO, founder, and adventurer Sam Cossman had found "a concept developed by a Turkish industrial designer" that was similar to what Qwake is developing now, and Crossman "started looking at what it would take to make it real."

Now, Qwake's team is composed of a neuroscientist, a computer vision expert, and a NASA rocket scientist (turned firefighter), among others.