Contact Tracing, Machines, And Civil Liberties

Already five regions within New York State have reopened for business, ushering in a new reality of “test, isolate, and trace.” The United States estimates it will hire close to 300,000 people to become contact tracers, identifying potential spreaders of the virus. Governor Cuomo has appointed former New York City … Read More

Executing Better By Listening To Public Discontent

In the wake of the closure of Apple’s autonomous car division (Project Titan) this week, one questions if Steve Jobs’ axiom still holds true. “Some people say, ‘Give the customers what they want.’ But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before … Read More

The Metaphysical Impact Of Automation

Earlier this month, I crawled into Dr. Wendy Ju‘s autonomous car simulator to explore the future of human-machine interfaces at CornellTech’s Tata Innovation Center. Dr Ju recently moved to the Roosevelt Island campus from Stanford University. While in California, the roboticist was famous for making videos capturing people’s reactions to … Read More

The Race For Robot Clairvoyance

This week a Harvard Business School student challenged me to name a startup capable of producing an intelligent robot – TODAY! At first I did not understand the question, as artificial intelligence (AI) is an implement like any other in a roboticist’s toolbox. The student persisted, she demanded to know … Read More

Investing in the Robotics Sector

Last week, I got flak from one reader for broaching the subject of ethics and robotics.  This week, I was pleased to learn about Clearpath’s $11 million in financing for developing new “ethical” robots.  According to the press release issued by the company, the majority of the funding will be applied to R&D … Read More

Are Robotics the Next Economic Bubble?

I have a knack for sniffing out economic bubbles.  In the 1990’s, I was working on emerging Internet technologies, and then pop.  In the 2000’s, I found myself in the middle of the real estate boom, and oh boy did it go boom.  And now Robotics… My predication is based … Read More