Google Street View Gives a Glimpse into Power of A.I.
The power of A.I. can reach deeper than just recommending which show to binge on Netflix. It can also be used to analyze millions of images to predict things like income, political leanings, and buying habits. Steve Lohr, Technology and Economics Reporter at The New York Times, joined us to discuss artificial intelligence's full potential when it comes to predictive analytics.
Lohr's recent piece in The New York Times highlights a Stanford study that used 50 million images from Google Street View to give a glimpse of A.I.'s ability to gather data. He explains that researchers identified 22 million cars to draw conclusions about information such as which political candidate a particular zip code favored. The project took just 2 weeks to classify all the cars. In his piece, Lohr points out that without the help of AI, it would take human experts over 15 years to accomplish that task.
This type of data collection raises concerns over privacy and issues of data access. He says most of predictive analysis has been used for commercial purposes and selling products. The use of data becomes scary when it becomes integrated into decisions such as hiring, he says, because the mistakes become more costly.
Velo3d, a company that provides metal 3D printed parts for companies such as SpaceX, reported a boost in Q4 revenue quarter over quarter. Founder and CEO Benny Buller, joined Cheddar News to discuss the earnings and the foundation of the company's current success. "The whole space sector is about 25 percent of our business. We have a lot of business in aviation, in power generation, in energy, and in semiconductors. I would say that the big jump in our revenue is related to the release of our Sapphire XC, which is a scale-up product reducing costs by about three times compared to the first Sapphire machines," he said. "This allows customers to dramatically reduce costs as well as make much bigger parts."
Under the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), corn-based ethanol has been mixed into gasoline sold at pumps in the U.S. since 2005, when a policy was enacted aimed at reducing emissions. Corn-based ethanol had been thought to be a relatively greener energy source compared to other biofuels, but now, a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports it may be actually worse for the climate than straight gasoline. Tyler Lark, an assistant scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center for Sustainability, joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell and discussed the pushback against the study. "Essentially when you need to produce more corn to meet the demand for use as ethanol as fuel, farmers respond and they switch more crops like soybeans and wheat into corn," Lark said. "They also bring more land into production, so things that used to be pasture grassland, and both those activities are associated with increased greenhouse gas emissions."
Video conferencing service Zoom rolled out a flurry of announcements that included a new Zoom Phone, Zoom Events, and Zoom Contact Center in an effort to transition the company from a pandemic darling to a post-pandemic business — while keeping the product accessible. Kelly Steckelberg, CFO of Zoom, joined Cheddar News to talk about the transition while still remaining affordable. "We currently have no plans to raise our prices," she said. "We focus on bringing as much value as possible to our customers. We often add new features and functionality without any incremental prices across the board."
Alexandre Mongeon, the CEO and co-founder of Vision Marine Technologies, joins Cheddar Innovates to discuss the latest innovations in the e-boating industry, and how fully electric motors and boats will play a role in the fight against the climate crisis.
Even as pandemic restrictions slowly began winding down through 2021, cable and internet provider Comcast's 2021 Network Report showed that average internet consumption increased. Activities like content streaming and online gaming grew between 10 and 20 percent, according to the study. Elad Nafshi, chief network officer for Comcast, joined Cheddar News to share what he thinks will happen with our new online habits in a post-pandemic world. "Beyond, the traditional game downloads, streaming gaming, which falling into the purposes is just like streaming 4K video for us, is starting to pick up and, and certainly we'll watch that consumer behavior continue," he said. Nafshi also discussed the company's investments in 10G technology, its future generation of network speed.
AMC has announced that it will be accepting Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, two meme cryptocurrencies, as online payment options, The theater chain will begin taking the memecoins in "a couple of weeks."
