Futurist in the press: Amazon home insurance could be on the horizon, CNBC
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As Connected Home devices become more capable and popular they will give insurers new insights into previously private user behaviours, and fundamentally change how insurance is sold. Connected home devices, that range from Alexa to smart fire alarms, lighting, security systems, thermostats, TV’s and...
3D printed Graphene Aerogel, stronger than steel and 99.8% lighter
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Tomorrow’s materials will be lighter, stronger and more flexible than todays, and that opens up a whole host of new applications. The world’s lightest 3D printed structure, a Graphene Aerogel, is so lightweight that it can be placed on top of a cotton ball...
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...
BMW and MIT create the world’s first 3D printed inflatable material
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Being able to 3D print materials with different and unique properties opens up a whole new range of use cases and applications, from car design to implanted medical devices, to soft robots and beyond. A two year collaboration between BMW and MIT has produced...
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 in the press: Tech giants and Trust in the dock, Associated Press
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Large platform dominate today’s internet landscape and in this article AP asks whether or not they are good stewards of our information, and, more importantly, whether they can be trusted with it. The Associated Press needs no introduction, today they are news organisation behind...
“No cut CRISPR” breakthrough lets scientists turn genes on and off at will
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Being able to precisely turn genes on and off “at will” will revolutionise personal medicine and bring about the creation of new revolutionary healthcare treatments. The gene editing tool CRISPR is one of the most exciting developments in modern genetics, for example recently it...
Milk and dairy products without the cow, Perfect Day re-invents dairy
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The way we produce food today is, for the most part, hugely wasteful and has a huge impact on the environment, vertical farms, clean meat, and now other “animal free” products are starting to disrupt the status quo. Over the past year we’ve seen...
Simple pixel hack cripples state of the art AI medical imaging systems
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As AI becomes increasingly pervasive in healthcare companies need to be aware that a new simple attack on their AI imaging and diagnostic systems could cause untold chaos, and even result in deaths. Recently we’ve seen how a duelling AI that adjusted a pixel or...
Waymo announces plans to buy 62,000 self-driving cars from Fiat Chrysler
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The self-driving car revolution will arrive earlier than many people expect, because global companies are in an arms race to own the “new” future where cars are provided as a service. It’s evident to anyone who’s been following the progress and roll out of...
General AI, the “holy grail” of AI, demonstrated for the first time
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF AI’s that can learn quickly, and from very small data sets, will fundamentally change how we train AI’s, their capabilities, and how fast they are deployed into the market. Recently we saw a new “Master algorithm” that could be used to create the first...
Fantastic self-healing material regenerates after suffering “catastrophic damage”
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF There are lots of dangerous industrial applications, and other use cases, where equipment of all kinds suffer extreme wear and tear, this new material could extend the life of products by multiples of time. The idea of creating self-repairing machines has been a popular...
AI recruiters are using advanced surveillance like tech to interview job seekers
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The same technologies that are helping us catch and profile criminals, or surveil civilians at scale, AI, biometrics, machine vision and so on, are also helping companies find, interview, analyse and categorise job seekers faster and more effectively than ever. Companies, like RBS and...
Lamborghini’s futuristic all electric, self healing hyper car won’t have batteries
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF It’s likely that our flirtation with battery packs in cars won’t last as long as we think as new wirelessly charged cars start emerging, and as new materials let the cars themselves become the batteries. Lamborghini and MIT recently introduced the Terzo Millennio concept, which...
Slow human co-workers get Flippy the burger flipping robot fired
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As the world continues to embrace automation one of the biggest problems could be figuring out the best way for robots and humans to work together. After debuting to much fanfare last year Flippy the burger flipping robot, made by Miso Robotics, who was...
Researchers use AI to turn smartphones into lab grade microscopes
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Not everyone has access to a lab grade microscope, and if you’re a doctor in the middle of nowhere that’s an issue that will delay disease diagnosis and potentially put lives at risk, this breakthrough will revolutionise front line medicine. Today we are on...
Two breakthroughs make it impossible to fake nuclear weapon decommissioning
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Making sure countries subject to nuclear disarmament treaties are actually decommissioning real, not fake, nuclear weapons has always posed a problem, this breakthrough will no longer let the fakers get away with it. In past negotiations aimed at reducing the arsenals of the world’s...
Scientists turned live bacteria into the world’s first biological computer
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF You could argue that DNA is actually the oldest programming language on Earth, and today we’re starting to learn how to write and program it in new ways to create new a completely new class of living, biological computers. Hot on the heels of...
Scientists stored a movie inside a living bacteria, then replayed it
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Today our computing platforms are mechanical and non-organic, but tomorrow’s will be biological, and immensely powerful, this is just one of a host of breakthroughs in the space. The bacteria E. coli might sometimes make us sick, but they have served as a workhorse in science...
Scientists successfully transferred memories between two snails
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The brain still has many mysteries, memory formation being one of them, but breakthroughs in epigenetics and neuroscience are starting to unravel them and it could lead to new sci-fi like capabilities and revolutionary new healthcare treatments. A lot has been going on in...
