Roborace’s fully autonomous race car prepares to pound the track at FoS
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF In the future our sports events could be dominated by robot and drone warriors battling it out for supremacy, and at some point this could present companies with a new market opportunity. Later this week, the world’s first autonomous race car company Roborace will make history...
Plexus VR gloves give users fine grained control of their VR environments
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The best technology is invisible and frictionless to use, and virtual reality still has a way to go before the experience is simple and seamless, but these gloves could help bring more users into the sector. Bringing a user’s hands into a Virtual Reality...
An AI just wrote, directed and produced its own appalling film, but it’s the future
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Today AI’s that are involved in film production are, for the most part, really awful, but over time they’ll improve and one day they’ll go head to head with the best human directors. Benjamin is a genius who may have created a film that’s...
New quantum resistant crypto stops quantum computers spying on your data
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF When large quantum computers come online circa 2025 over 70 percent of the world’s encryption will be at risk, so companies need to adopt new method to protect themselves and their data. As quantum computing becomes an increasingly “real” technology, moving out of the...
Bin your headphones, Noveto streams sound straight into your ears
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Wired headphones get tangled, wireless headphones need charging, so why bother with headphones at all? When Apple introduced the iPhone 7 they removed the headphone jack and spun it as a win for consumers who could now use wireless headphones, obviously preferably Apple branded...
US military and DARPA team up to develop tech to uncover fake news
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The advent of powerful AI tools, adaptable neural networks and the democratisation of hi definition rendering have taken fake news to a new level and this program aims to unmask the fakes. We’ve all seen that video where Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered algorithms make it seem like Barack...
CGI “Virtual influencers” on Instagram battle it out in public, snag real ad cash
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Today we are used to the majority of our influencers, and contacts, being human, but as we progress into the future more of the encounters we have will be with virtual entities, in the form of avatars, bots and virtual vloggers like these. It...
Futurist keynote, Reading: Adapt or Die, Cherwell European Conference
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The pace of change, and disruption, is accelerating. In this presentation I show just how fast, and how crazy, the world’s business environment is getting, it’s impact on every sector, and what you can do to future proof yourself. Firstly, I’d like to thank...
Google’s lifelike sounding AI assistant, Duplex, blows past uncanny valley
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF I’ve been saying this for a long time, very soon you won’t know whether the content you’re consuming was generated by a human or a machine, and Google’s latest product, Duplex, moves us all one step closer to that time. At Google’s I/O developer...
Biased AI’s are becoming a problem, this startup is fighting back
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The rise of the “Algorithmic society” coupled with biased AI’s and machines means that increasingly bias, if left unchecked, can change the course of people’s lives, as well as viewpoints, both with potentially life changing and harmful consequences. Today there is a huge amount...
Las Vegas goes high tech with cocktail mixing robots
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The resent resurgence in interest in the field of robotics means we are now seeing more robots appearing in more places taking on more tasks. Las Vegas who recently met its goal to be 100 percent powered by renewable energy is full of dazzling...
AI starts reading sentences directly from people’s brains
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As AI becomes increasingly adept at helping unlock the secrets of the brain it’s also becoming more adept at helping decode and visualise complex thoughts onto TV’s and other devices. The capabilities and accuracy of Artificial Intelligence (AI) “mind reading” systems, as they are increasing...
Experts believe AI will be used to hijack brain machine interfaces, form consortium
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As brain machine interfaces become more capable, and as their use cases and adoption broaden, experts are worried that regulators will leave it to late to protect people from bad actors and misuse. Ever since Tesla CEO and founder Elon Musk announced his plans...
Creative AI’s generate video from plain text
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Imagine not being able to program or code, but still being able to write a description or a script and have an AI create an HD image or video of it for you, this is the technology that’s now arriving. In 2016 an Artificial...
Microsoft’s newest AI is an artist with an imagination
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF There is a great tussle going on between people who believe AI can never become “creative” and those who do, but depending on how you define “imagination” Microsofts latest AI could prove the naysayers wrong. Ever since computer scientist Alan Turing first proposed his...
New theory let’s scientists bring light to a standstill
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The manipulation of light is becoming an increasingly important factor in the development of new communications, computing, energy and entertainment systems, and our mastery of it is getting better all the time. Light is famously fast, normally travels at nearly 300,000 kilometres per second through...
Google’s AI can rate photos on aesthetic appeal
WHY THIS MATTER IN BRIEF Google’s AI is moving from just being able to identify and categorise images to being able to identify them according to their aesthetics, and that’s big. Today’s slew of photo apps can help you find objects in your pictures but they don’t tell you...
Baidu’s AI can clone anyone’s voice in under a minute
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Being able to clone people’s voices, and mimic them, opens up a range of well meaning opportunities, but it also paves the way for fake news chaos and everything in between… In the near future, just as it is today, fake news will become...
Scientists have created the world’s best and biggest 3D living hologram
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Scientists, and society at large, have been waiting for holograms technology to appear on the market for decades, and while you’ll still have to wait before you can buy one in the shops we’re starting to edge closer to realising the dream. Science fiction...
Nvidia’s newest AI turns sunny streets into snow filled ones in real time
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Leaps in computing performance are letting AI’s produce real time, photo realistic fake video footage that has a variety of applications, from training self-driving cars to helping create fake news. As everyone knows, or at least can suspect, the sunny weather in California is...
