Maybe the right way to master artificial intelligence isn’t through the markets, but through open collaboration, pure research, and … (shudder) our governments
One of the most intriguing public discussions to emerge over the past year is humanity’s wrestling match with the threat and promise of artificial intelligence. AI has long lurked in our collective consciousness — negatively so, if we’re to take Hollywood movie plots as our guide — but its recent and very real advances are driving critical conversations about the future not only of our economy, but of humanity’s very existence.
In May 2014, the world received a wakeup call from famed physicist Stephen Hawking. Together with three respected AI researchers, the world’s most renowned scientist warned that the commercially-driven creation of intelligent machines could be “potentially our worst mistake in history.” Comparing the impact of AI on humanity to the arrival of “a superior alien species,” Hawking and his co-authors found humanity’s current state of preparedness deeply wanting. “Although we are facing potentially the best or worst thing ever to happen to humanity,” they wrote, “little serious research is devoted to these issues outside small nonprofit institutes.”
Today’s Top Stories — Want To Please Investors? Be More Sustainable: A new study connects sustainability and finances. — The Case for Universal Basic Income Continues, Despite Voter Rejection: A legendary labor leader takes up the cause. — Nike Turns Garbage Into Shoes: And it jumps on the “circular economy” bandwagon. — Why LinkedIn Sold to Microsoft: Because it had to, mostly. — Apple Begins To Open Up: The Cupertino giant is changing direction.
Want To Please Investors? Be More Sustainable Investors are seeing the connection between corporate sustainability performance and financial performance (MIT Sloan Management Review). It’s a virtuous connection, so more investors are demanding data that sustainability at companies is real and business models that take advantage of it. According to this MIT study, “three quarters of executives in investment firms agree that sustainability performance is materially important for investment decisions, citing revenue growth, operational efficiency, and risk reduction as the boons of solid sustainability management.” So what are companies waiting for?
Today’s Top Stories — Tesla’s Gigafactory Is About More Than Electric Cars: How high do Elon Musk’s ambitions go? — Your Street Belongs to Waze: The navigation app gives the fastest route. Not everyone’s happy about that. — BuzzFeed Cancels Seven-Figure Ad Deal, Blames Trump Policies: Like it or not, the company walks its talk. — Supreme Court Grants Suit Against Google Class-Action Status: Another legal case against the search giant moves forward. — Would You Like an AK-47 With That T-Shirt? Kalashnikov rebrands.
Tesla’s Gigafactory Is About More Than Electric Cars Whether he’s thinking about colonizing Mars or slicing two years off his deadline to deliver half a million electric cars, Tesla’s Elon Musk doesn’t think small. So as Tesla prepares to open the “Gigafactory” for Tesla batteries in Nevada later this year, it’s easy to wonder whether his ambitions go beyond merely dominating the next generation of transportation (Fortune). When completed, the factory will double the world’s lithium-ion battery production. Tesla’s CTO JB Straubel says the purpose of the factory is “to reinvent battery manufacturing” and not only for electric cars, but also for Tesla’s grid battery initiative for homes. There’s more power, Musk says, in building “the machine that builds the machine.” Five hundred thousand electric cars by 2018 is as big, hairy, and audacious a goal as most people can imagine; seems like that’s just the beginning of what Musk hopes to build in Nevada.
Today’s Top Stories — Europe Takes the Lead on Clean Driving: Paris and Norway ready rules to lessen air pollution. — The Idea That’s Killing Mission-Driven Companies: What neoliberalism is doing to businesses that want to do more than make a profit. — Swiss Voters Reject Universal Basic Income: Pilot programs remain, but the first full-country referendum is a crushing loss. — Cadillac Dealerships Go Virtual: GM’s luxury brand looks for a way to differentiate. — Even the Biggest Tech Companies Have To Appease Governments: Who holds more power, American tech giants or the countries that regulate them?
The Grail team outside their SF HQ on “Grail Day” — the first day of the company’s life earlier this spring.
Jeff Huber lost his wife Laura to cancer last fall, a loss made even more devastating by the knowledge he had gained through a mid-career shift into life sciences at Google, and board work with the gene sequencing pioneer Illumina. Just as his wife’s cancer was metastasizing beyond the reach of science, Huber was working with the Illumina board to spin out a company that promised to detect and ultimately provide the tools to beat cancer before it could spread throughout a person’s body.
After his wife’s death, Huber became CEO of the newly spun-out company. Dubbed Grail, it is backed by more than $100 million from Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Google, and others. Grail’s unofficial debut came via a moving commencement speech, “Find A Better Way,” that Huber gave at his alma mater in May.
Today’s Top Stories — Climate Isn’t the Only Thing Changing for Exxon Mobil: Investors want to know more about the environmental risks ahead. — And Then There Were None: The S&P 500 loses its only black woman CEO. — Facebook Isn’t Biased, According to Facebook: Internal research exonerates the company from intentional messing with its Trending Topics. Of course it did. — A Tale of Two Countries: The America of big cities is thriving and entrepreneurial. The other is in trouble. — Google Turns Off Most Useful Feature of Its New App: It has end-to-end encryption, but it doesn’t ship that way.
Climate Isn’t the Only Thing Changing for Exxon Mobil Shareholders are supposedly interested in a rising stock price no matter what, but some attempts to prop up stock prices may benefit the environment, however inadvertently. At Exxon Mobil’s annual meeting tomorrow, investors will vote on a resolution to force the company to reveal what climate change might do to its business (New York Times). Similar resolutions have gone nowhere in the past, but a recent SEC ruling said the vote has to happen this time. Some of those behind the resolution are activist investors who want the company to change policy; others just want transparency so they can make better investment decisions. Either way, it looks like the largest publicly traded energy company in the world is going to have to be more accountable even to those who don’t care about climate change.
Uber Agrees to a Not-Quite Union Deal You might use the term “guild” to describe how you collaborate in World of Warcraft; Uber is using it as a way to agree to some union benefits for its drivers without going full union. Fresh from settling a pair of class-action suits about driver status two weeks ago, the company has “blessed” the creation of the Independent Drivers Guild (NYT), which will cover 35,000 New York drivers and be associated with a regional branch of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Union, while not being an actual union itself. The deal will last for five years and provides for regular labor/management meetings, an appeal process for rejected drivers, and opportunities to buy discounted benefits through the Guild. The deal does not, however, provide for collective bargaining or extend beyond New York City — and it prevents the Guild from trying to unionize drivers. (Meanwhile, another attempt to unionize Uber’s NYC drivers, via the Amalgamated Transit Union, remains underway.) It’s been more than a year since Uber started making a big deal of extending various olive branches to drivers, riders, and municipalities, but this halfway move and its let-us-play-by-our-own-rules-or-we’re-outta-here approach in Austin (which we covered earlier this week) suggests that the company is still figuring out when it’s best to obey the speed limit and when it should stick to its original approach: pedal to the floor.
