The idea that roads will become safer, with fewer traffic accidents, is a driving force behind the new technology. As pedestrians quickly figure out (driverless) cars’ behavior, they will adapt theirs as well. The effects could be dramatic: instead of more consistent, traffic flow could become chaotic.
Use of smartphones and tablets has exploded over the same period that drug use has declined. This correlation does not mean that one phenomenon is causing the other, but interactive media appears to play to similar impulses as drug experimentation. Use of marijuana is down over the past decade even as social acceptability is up. Use of cocaine, hallucinogens, ecstasy and crack are all down, too
App-enabled food delivery services have gone from being an afterthought to a core part of business, with restaurateurs realizing that smartphone apps don’t cause a drop-off in dine-in customers, but instead help grow a new customer base. According to GrubHub, 95% of the delivery market still places orders using paper menus. And according to DoorDash’s stats, some 80% of U.S. restaurants still don’t offer delivery.
An insurance agent offer(s) a $1,200 policy covering up to $1 million of income lost during an Amazon suspension. There are 2 million Amazon merchants in the U.S. so the new business has potential. "Merchants need some layer of protection, otherwise they're 100 percent exposed."
Chinese automaker Chery filed a complaint with the country's trademark regulator over Mercedes-Benz's use of the "EQ" name for a line of green-energy vehicles, throwing up a potential road block in the world's largest electric car market.Mercedes said that the company had filed trademark applications regarding EQ with relevant authorities. A ruling in Chery's favor would be a blow to Mercedes.
Starbucks has struggled with mobile ordering at high-traffic locations, with the mix of mobile and walk-in orders causing bottlenecks during busy hours. Waiting longer for mobile orders especially when there is no line of walk-in customers can be even more infuriating for customers as it feels "unfair." When using the app no longer means a speedier Starbucks experience, it offers customers less incentive to download. Success isn't just speeding up mobile orders.
Uber isn’t worth $70 billion because it is actually worth $70 billion. It's not profitable, and has little protection from competitors. Uber’s valuation is a reflection of the marketplace. “If there is a reduction in Uber’s value, the lesson is of better corporate governance for early stage companies so that the tradeoffs they made early don't end up being harmful.”
Algorithms may lead to a loss in human judgment as people become reliant on the software to think for them. "Humanity and human judgment are lost when data and predictive modeling become paramount." Humans (will be) "inputs" in the process and not real beings. "It will be too convenient to follow an algorithm (or, too difficult to go beyond such advice), turning algorithms into self-fulfilling prophecies and users into zombies who consume easy-to-consume items."
Domino’s share price growth has outperformed all of the world’s largest tech companies so far this decade. An investment in Domino’s at the start of 2010 has grown by more than 2,000% to date, leaving Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Apple in the dust. Since Domino’s swapped its crappy old pizza recipe for a better-tasting one in late 2009, the fast-food chain has been rising by an order of magnitude more than the overall market.
Microsoft’s patents for connected cars includes tools to store and transfer files, cybersecurity, and AI. It sees driving becoming far more personalized and convenient in the future.Microsoft’s agreement follows a tie up with Toyota to create data analytics focused on bringing new Internet-connected services to cars us(ing) Microsoft’s cloud computing service to develop new products for drivers, businesses with car fleets, and dealers.
Trying to beat Amazon at its own game is likely to fail. With 160 million items for sale, Amazon has become the go-to. Walmart sells “only” 15 million items. 52% of online shoppers start their search on Amazon. (But) Walmart has the best distribution and retail network in the world. It should excel at improving the in-store experience, promoting omnichannel shopping and fulfillment, and develop in-person service innovations (which) leverage brand equity, core competencies and put Amazon at a disadvantage.
91 percent of business users said their productivity is negatively impacted by employer security measures, and 92 percent reported that their organization’s remote-access policies also hampered productivity. Insider threats are the biggest area of concern, but many data breaches caused by insider actions are done out of frustration if an employee feels restrained by cybersecurity policies
Rather than giving devices the full power of a credit card, Samsung’s plan is to treat them like prepaid credit cards, loaded with a specific amount of cash and unable to charge more than that. The idea is to put limits on what a wearable can be used to buy: it’d make them less of a problem if lost or stolen. And Samsung imagines it could also be a useful way for parents to give money to their children, since they could put a limit on it.
Instead of revolutionizing the beauty industry with data analysis and the topic’s holy grail—defining beauty in a universal, objective manner—Beauty.AI and its competitions only reinforced the limited capabilities of algorithms when it comes to labeling human beings. Bots (like beauty at large) often involve a degree of subjectivity. And what the robots saw were institutional prejudices—not universal beauty.
Accountability applies to marketers and media agencies as well. They need to get a lot closer to what's going on … "If as an advertiser or an agency you are just going for the cheapest across the internet … you might not end up where you want to be." The best way to fix it is to hold them economically accountable."
IBM ha(s) decided to “co-locate” US marketing teams together from six different locations. Design, security, procurement, IT, and teams on Watson, Internet of Things, and Cloud have been co-located. By 2009 40% of IBM’s 386,000 employees worked at home (the company noted that it had reduced its office space by 78 million square feet and saved about $100 million in the US annually as a result). Doing what it has always done, but better, won't cut it. “Speed, agility, creativity and learning are the benefits of working together."
The industry is having trouble making money. HFT firms use computers to buy and sell financial assets in fractions of a second. The once-lucrative business is now fighting unfavorable market conditions, brutal competition and rising costs. Revenues at HFT firms from U.S. equities trading were $1.1 billion last year, down from $7.2 billion in 2009. “In volatile trading environments, it was easier to find trading opportunities.”
No one wants to fund ecommerce anymore.There’s been no shortage of e-commerce companies that have failed recently. Amazon is on a tear. They make good products that are private label. The last vertical that a lot of these retailers haven’t tackled yet is health and beauty, and that’s where the margin is. "Amazon is a wonderful partner of ours [but] I’m always nervous.This isn’t a friendly game.”
Neural network code underlies many of our interactions with technology these days, whether it’s voice commands or predictive keyboards, fitness tracking or just efficient Amazon shipping schedules. A neuromorphic computer is a physical manifestation of a neural network simulation: millions of simple computing units networked with complex, variable, connections. New apps for phones run algorithms longer and (offer) better battery life.
Motivated reasoning is how people convince themselves or remain convinced of what they want to believe—they seek out agreeable information and learn it more easily; and they avoid, ignore, devalue, forget, or argue against information that contradicts their beliefs. People often don’t engage with information as information but as a marker of identity. Information becomes tribal.
Human drivers were forced to take control of Uber’s self-driving cars about once per mile during testing in Arizona, according to an internal performance report. The figures suggest that safety drivers appear to intervene regularly out of caution — even in cases where an accident may not be imminent.“To take out the safety drivers, you would want far better performance than these numbers suggest, and you’d want consistently better performance,”
Apple really has no choice. Cook and his team see (AR) as the best way for the company to dominate the next generation of gadgetry and keep people wedded to its ecosystem. Over time, AR devices will replace the iPhone. "It's something they need to do to continue to grow and defend against the shift in how people use hardware."
While there are benefits to installing multiple assistants on one phone, chances are most people will find it easiest to stick to one. Even if all assistants could add always-on voice control, thinking through when you want to say “Hey, Siri” vs. “Alexa!” might offset the time you wanted to save by speaking your request.
Organizations are trying to get more rigorous about the process (of building teams). They’re picking employees’ brains to get a deeper understanding of their personalities and motives, then analyzing team performance to see what type of person works best with whom. What ma(kes) a great team? Those in which people had the most tolerance for their teammates’ perspectives and those in which people had the greatest diversity in personalities.
Chowbotics’ robots can dispense and dish out food, negating the need for humans. The company’s first product is Sally the salad robot. Sally is capable of serving up measured quantities of more than 20 different ingredients. The technology can also be used for other types of cuisine, including Indian, Chinese, and Mexican. The startup raised a $1.3 million seed round last year.
The US government ban(ned) laptops, iPads and other electronics “larger than a cellphone” on flights from Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. None of them are covered by the ban on travel from six other Muslim nations. “If you assume the attacker is interested in turning a laptop into a bomb, it would work just as well in the cargo hold. If you’re worried about hacking, a cellphone is a computer.”
Rigid performance measurements such as key performance indicators or the balanced scorecard are increasingly used by companies to manage all aspects of a business. But these metrics don't account for factors such as trust and common sense, and, as a result, managerial discretion and professionalism are routinely undervalued. No set of metrics can anticipate every contingency. Rigid evaluation can cause those who have the company's best interests at heart to lose faith
Google Glass has been "a total game changer." Quality checks are now 20 percent faster and it's also helpful for on-the-job training of new employees. Before this, workers used tablets. "Tablets were being broken just by being dropped. So we were looking for a solution that offered more information in a more timely manner."
It's not the knowledge, it's the way it is applied. JL It's easy to jump to conclusions, especially if you are smart and experienced. You must remember that you have a certain point of view clouded by cognitive biases.You may know your brand, product, service, or business model better than anyone else. That all sounds great, but you might actually know too much. Your knowledge can cloud your judgment if you aren't humble enough to be truly open to other points or view.
“Most of the advances come from [chip] design and software.” Modern microchips contain not only CPUs but also two dozen or more separate digital-signal processors, as well as a graphics processing unit. Each element is optimized for a different task, from handling images to listening for the phone’s “wake word.” Microchips illustrate Steve Jobs’s famous quote paraphrasing Alan Kay : “People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.”
In the 20th century we got used to a certain way of thinking: if you needed something, you bought it. Efficient manufacturing and logistics made it possible to create an unprecedented global overflow of stuff. Ownership became a way of defining who you are. “As a service” models become feasible when the number of sensors that surround us increases. From the perspective of new service models, it is the “Internet of No Things.”
Alibaba and JD provide startups with capital, delivery orders and data to help run the dispatch systems. These startups don’t own refrigerated warehouses. They send contract couriers to supermarkets and shops where store employees bag the orders for the couriers. Shoppers can click on their phones and have groceries within an hour. Chinese shoppers spent 90.5 billion yuan ($13.1 billion) buying fresh produce online last year, an 86% jump from the previous year.
The National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s source of blue-ribbon advice on science policy, recommended that germ-line modification of human beings be permitted in the future in certain narrow circumstances to prevent the birth of children with serious diseases. “We looked at these questions without considering what happens in the political sphere. That is a moving target.That is beyond us.”
VCs favored engineer CEOs who often lacked understanding of what marketing customers really needed. It created a misaligned incentive structure that rewarded low quality digital deliveries instead of high quality audience interactions.Advertisers were pitted against publishers in a zero-sum game where advertisers "win" by getting the best inventory cheaply as possible, and publishers "win" by selling the worst inventory possible at the highest price possible.
Advances in artificial intelligence may diminish (lawyers') role in the legal system or even replace them altogether (and) algorithms are changing how judges mete out punishments. We might see a completely automated and ever-present legal system that runs on sensors and preagreed contracts. (Or) "Software is changing how decisions are made, and it’s changing the profession. But data-driven analysis technology is assisting human work rather than replacing it."
Many people today are working a 16-hour week (to) create useful economic value. The other 20+ hours in the office are spent supporting the informational, bureaucratic and administrative burden made possible by new technology. People in any organization have two motivations. One to create genuine economic value; the other to protect their continued employment. People in jobs where productivity is hard to measure will focus more on the latter.
Algorithms indicate when breathing changes to patterns typical of someone who is sleeping, giving a warning before someone actually feels tired. A camera-based system will monitor head and eye movements, as well as body posture, heart rate and body temperature used in autonomous driving, (so) the vehicle could take over once drowsiness is detected. (But) regardless of how good technology is at detecting drowsiness, because sleep is a biological need, the solution for drivers is still a low-tech one: Pull over and take a nap.
Nike and Adidas have each stated their ambitions to put a man under two hours in the marathon.Optimum designs for maximizing running performance should provide sufficient traction, minimal weight, and maximum cushioning. "We’re using better foam. Better plates. And using it more intelligently, which is the other breakthrough. The geometry, the way the system works together, is really what’s allowed this to work."
So many ordinary objects and experiences have become technologized—made dependent on computers, sensors, and other apparatuses meant to improve them—that they have also ceased to work in their usual manner. Technology is also more precarious than it once was. Unstable, and unpredictable. At least from the perspective of human users. From the vantage point of technology, if it can be said to have a vantage point, it's evolving separately from human use.
Computing keeps achieving new heights, but our ability to interface with silicon is stuck in the keyboard era. Even when speaking to a computer program like Alexa or Siri, you can convey at most about 40 bits per second of information and only for short bursts. Compare that to data transfer records of a trillion bits per second along a fiber-optic cable.
As we redesign cities around new autonomous transport networks, a lot of space that is currently used for things like parking (roughly 14% of land in LA is used for this purpose) but the carparks of the future will be ‘smarter’ and use less space. Retailing is going to change because delivery robots (are) small and cheap. It will be more cost effective to hail autonomous vehicles, with options for group-sharing rather than owning a car that sits 95% of the time.
Because Asia and Europe have become the largest producers of cars, electronics, furniture (etc), those regions have invested the most and have the most valuable insight as to how to automate. America has outsourced its manufacturing and lacks investment in industrial robotics, (so) may miss out on the next radical shift in how goods are produced. Because the the robots that make robots could play a key role in determining how automation expands.
 |
Subscribe via RSS |
|
Subscribe via Email |
As a Partner and Co-Founder of Predictiv and PredictivAsia, Jon specializes in management performance and organizational effectiveness for both domestic and international clients. He is an editor and author whose works include Invisible Advantage: How Intangilbles are Driving Business Performance.
Learn more...
| View on Amazon |  |
