Smart campus
We're here again this week with 10 new uses of technology and 3 illuminating questions for each.
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Campus sensors
| Privacy | Ethics | Data drift |
| Automation | Machine Vision |
| Construction, building and facilities management |
Futuristic, sensor-laden building in the middle of privacy concern battle. Read more...
- Is campus the best place to test this technology?
- What else could have been done with these funds to make this building greener?
- What disruptions might the automation enabled by these sensors create should they malfunction?
Flying cars
| Environmental impact | Public trust | Partial automation |
| Other |
| Personal and public transportation, ride sharing, micromobility | Aerospace and Aviation |
There seems to be a renewed interest in personal air transportation in the form of vertical take-off and landing vehicles. Read more...
- Will the public want to stand the noise?
- In a clean-energy constrained world, can we afford the loss in efficiency over land-based vehicles?
- Which elements of logistics in a crowded urban environment may prevent these from operating?
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Too soon?
| Misinformation | Public trust | Copyright |
| Artificial Intelligence | Web 2.0 |
| Social Media | Telecommunications |
BuzzFeed is already generating entire articles with AI. Read more...
- What is the cost/benefit of the reputational damage?
- On the spectrum from AI-assisted brainstorming to complete articles, is there a sweet spot?
- Would disclosure be enough?
Chatbot secrets
| Organizational trust | Cybersecurity |
| Artificial Intelligence |
| Enterprise software, B2B software, SAAS |
The adoption of chatbots at the enterprise level is fraught with security risks. Read more...
- Should a chatbot only know where to find information rather than the actual information?
- Will the chatbot interface need to be one of the most secure endpoints at the enterprise level?
- Should access to a chatbot be gained, can the attack be further automated, such as using another chatbot to defeat it?
Algorithmic perfumery
| Babysitting | Induced complacency | Skill decay |
| Algorithms |
| Consumer goods |
Age-old perfumery techniques meet new algorithmic tech to create new formulations. Read more...
- How much leeway is given to the algorithm, really?
- Can new ingredient be included in the modelling effectively?
- Can I scent that is purely derived via algorithm be protected in terms of intellectual property?
BloombergGPT
| Incentives | Situational awareness | Emergent behaviors |
| Artificial Intelligence |
| Banking and Financial |
Bloomberg builds its own large language model based on its large corpus of financial data. Read more...
- Should every company have its own GPT?
- Does contract law address the contributions of current and former employees being used in this way?
- Who will safeguard these models from being used inappropriately?
Optimized video
| Goal alignment | Algorithmic influence | Alignment of expectations |
| Artificial Intelligence | Machine Vision | Web 2.0 |
| Advertising and marketing | Creator economy and art |
Munch is an AI-powered platform that edits and augments video content to maximize impact. Read more...
- Will such products be the start of an "algorithm war"?
- Will any human be left with an artistic license?
- To what extent can an algorithm do better with A/B testing?
Running in place
| User safety | Implementation costs |
| AR | VR |
| Consumer goods | Big entertainment, pro sports |
Fictionalized omnidirectional treadmill is finally ready for consumers after a decade. Read more...
- Would consumers spend as much on this as a normal treadmill - or peloton bike?
- How can this device be made injury-proof?
- Will hand-tracking unlock the potential of other immersive components?
More than whole-grain
| Consumer trends | Environmental impact |
| Agtech and cultured food |
| Food and drink, restaurants, meal delivery |
New flour developed which uses the whole plant. Read more...
- What is the impact on other uses for the rest of the plant?
- What is the health benefit when measured against the rest of the food's content that this flour is used to make?
- Is there an investment in equipment required to harvest the plant as such?
Air capture
| Incentives | Environment/Climate change |
| Clean Tech |
| Corporate social governance |
Swiss company turning C02 from air into rocks using a unique process and has accepted advanced payments from companies such as Microsoft to do so. Read more...
- What fine print is there for those advanced payments?
- What new issues arise when this technology is used at scale?
- What's the price elasticity of carbon capture as a service?
The Crossfactors Newsletter
Each week we look at 10 new uses of technologies from any of the 30+ industries and the 25+ technology domains we watch. Get smart about the tech you bring into your products, your organization and your life. Pig hearts | Ethics | Adoption | | Medical and biotech | | Healthcare, Medicine, Digital Health | Company pioneers gene-edited pig heart transplants, conducting trials on baboons as a potential solution for babies with severe heart defects. Read more... How can parents in a position to...
Lots of food content this week. Not sure why. Maybe I was hungry. Review Response | User goals | Incentives | | Web 2.0 | | Food and drink, restaurants, meal delivery | A discussion of how restaurants should approach online reviews. Read more... Is there a better outlet for retaliatory reviews? Is there a growing or diminishing dependence on online reviews? How should a restaurant maintain an online personality? Cultivated Meatballs | Public trust | Consumer trends | | Agtech and cultured...
Each week we look at 10 new uses of technologies from any of the 30+ industries and the 25+ technology domains we watch. Get smart about the tech you bring into your products, your organization and your life. Metaverse Guardians | User trust | User safety | | Web 2.0 | VR | | Data protection and cybersecurity | Social Media | Undercover content moderators play a big role in ensuring safety and protecting users within the metaverse. Read more... Where does the balance lie between safety and...