Year: 2019

Tech and political leaders sounded the alarm bell today about the potential for artificial intelligence to exacerbate huge inequalities across the world. The mood music coming out of the World Economic Forum is that AI is seen as having great potential to solve some of the world’s most pressing issues (such as climate change), but if individual organizations and countries implement AI systems and others do not, then they will race far ahead, spreading inequality between economies and leading to unforeseen consequences for the planet.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland, the President of Colombia (Iván Duque Márquez), Marc Benioff (chairman and co-CEO of Salesforce) and Kai-Fu Lee (the Chinese venture capitalist, and an artificial intelligence expert) backed a new WEF initiative to expand its network of “Centres for the Fourth Industrial Revolution” to Columbia and other emerging economies. Joining Columbia will be Israel and the UAE, and other affiliate centres are planned.

The Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) was created by the WEF as a hub for “global, multistakeholder cooperation to develop policy frameworks and advance collaborations that accelerate the benefits of science and technology.” But in particular, it has a focus on how rapidly and equally advanced technologies are spread across the world.

One of the problems with the spread of high tech is that government policies governing emerging technologies can be incredibly piecemeal, with some areas becoming regulated heavily, and others hardly at all.

When it comes to the spread of AI, which could have exponential effects on companies and economies, the resulting inequalities would be a sort of ‘weaponization’ of the space, the WEF argues.

Benioff himself has championed the creation of the C4IR
in San Francisco, being as it is at the epicenter of many of the greatest advances in technology. But he’s also acutely aware that the city is grappling with huge inequalities between those who’ve benefitted from the march of technology and those who have been almost entirely let behind. During the WEF this year he called San Francisco a ‘train wreck‘ of inequality because of Silicon Valley.

“The fourth industrial revolution
It’s an extraordinary moment in history,” he said. “The fourth industrial revolution holds great promise in the creation of new jobs, new ways to cure disease and relieve suffering. But on the other hand there’s a risk that it will worsen our economic, racial, gender and even our environmental inequalities. This can be seen with AI. We are risking a new tech divide between those who have access to AI and those who do not. I strongly believe that AI is going to be a new human right. Every person and every country needs to have access to this new critical technology.”

He continued: “Today, only a few countries and companies have access to the best AI in the world. And this who have it will be smarter, healthier, richer and of course, their warfare will be significantly more advanced. That is why it’s critical that we ask the equation now, especially in regards to equality. What are we doing to really bring these technologies to everyone? Those without with AI will be less educated, weaker, poorer and sicker. So we must ask ourselves, is this the kind of world want to live in?”

He then went on to reference the obvious inequalities in San Francisco. “We also have a tremendous crisis of trust in the misuse of data and privacy,” he said.

“We are in a crisis of trust in the industry. The ‘techlash’ has never been bigger. We’re at the tip of the spear [in San Francisco], we are in a great place [to study tech]. We are a little big in the future.”

His view is that the WEF’s network of Centres for the Fourth Industrial Revolution will help to address how companies and governments can apply hi-tech like AI across society and economies.

Benioff said technology was neither good nor bad itself but it’s “what we do with it matters”. “We can see our planet is in crisis. By 2050 we will have an ocean with more plastic than fish, according to the WEF… all of these issues could be addressed through ‘fourth industry revolution technology’. He praised the WEF for launching this new center in Columbia.

Dr Kai-Fu Lee, the chair of the WEF’s global AI council, said: “Various consulting firms have estimated that AI could create 13-17 trillion dollars of incremental GDP in the next 11 years. And every country is now producing an AI plan.” But, he said, AI will have profound effects on jobs, privacy, and security. “We hope to be a center that considers many viewpoints. We have to recognize that the attitudes and visions for AI across countries and regions may be different and we have to find a way to work together. A simple catch-all approach simply will not work. The unique advantage of the WEF is that it was born out of inclusiveness. We’re not here to impose western or indeed eastern values onto the whole world.” He said bringing together nations to work on AI would create a better approach to the application of AI globally.

Fu Lee the race for AI was “moving too quickly and many people misunderstand it. It’s creating tension between countries.” So we need a “transparent discussion.”

Since launch, Brandless has looked to make shopping for everyday items simple by pricing everything at $3. Today, for the first time since the company came on the scene, Brandless will be adding new items that exceed its own $3 limit.

The e-commerce brand is adding baby and pet products to its portfolio.

Baby products include Premium Diapers with no latex, lotion fragrance or chlorine processing, organic baby food pouches and cruelty-free baby care products like baby wipes, lotion, shampoo and diaper rash cream. Pet products include protein treats, supplement chews, non-toxic toys, hemp collars and pet cleanup waste bags made with a TDPA technology material that breaks down faster in landfills.

Though some of these products won’t wear the $3 pricetag as a uniform like other Brandless goods, the company says that 90 percent of its products still fall into the $3 category. Products that are not $3 or less will be $9.

Brandless recently introduced a subscription, giving users a stickier way to interact with the brand, especially on the heels of the launch of pet and baby products.

The subscription is free, but it asks users to meet a minimum of $36 for free shipping, and it auto-fills the box with goods you’ve chosen for monthly resupplies.

The time between purchase and receipt is difficult for products like the ones Brandless sells. Toilet paper, snacks, pet food etc. all come in different amounts that last a different length of time. This means that options like Amazon Prime, which offers shipping as fast as same-day in some cases, become incredibly attractive to restock on that one thing that ran out too quick.

Edison Trends took a look at Brandless over a period between 2017 and 2018 and found that retention was the company’s most pressing issue. Only 20 percent of customers who bought something in late 2017 came back the next quarter for a purchase, and only 13 percent came back the quarter after that.

Since Brandless gives back the cost of marketing its products to consumers, word of mouth and customer loyalty are the two pillars upon which the company is built. Subscriptions and new product categories are two ways to bring on new users and build loyalty with an existing customer base.

But the seven-year-old company has plenty of work to do. With nearly $300 million in funding, investors and shareholders are expecting big things from Brandless.

Two years ago this week, AppDynamics was about to IPO. Then Cisco swooped in with a big fat check for $3.7 billion and plans changed quickly. Today, as part of Cisco, the company announced it was expanding its monitoring vision across the business with a number of enhancements to its product suite.

AppDynamics CEO David Wadhwani says the company wants to monitor your technology wherever it lives in the enterprise from serverless to mainframe. That kind of comprehensive view of a customer’s computing environment requires a level of built-in intelligence, and being part of a large organization like Cisco helped move more quickly towards this approach.

Last year when Cisco bought Perspica, a machine learning startup, it folded the engineering team into AppDynamics with a plan to make the product more intelligent. Given the sheer amount of information, a product like AppDynamics is monitoring it’s a perfect use case for machine learning, which feeds on copious amounts of data.

Today the company announced the fruit of that labor in the form of a new Cognition Engine. Instead of simply pointing out that there is a problem, and leaving it to the DevOps team to figure out the root cause, the Cognition Engine handles both in an automated way. When you combine that with a rules engine, you can move from detection to root cause analysis to remediation much more quickly than in the past. Eventually Wadhwani expects the Cognition Engine can learn from the rules engine and begin to build even more automated fixes.

Root Cause Analysis. Screen: AppDynamics

The company is also announcing some new monitoring capabilities including AWS Lambda, the serverless service, which has been gaining momentum in recent years among developers. Teh approach poses challenges to a monitoring tool like AppDynamics because the application doesn’t sit on a defined virtual machine, but instead uses ephemeral resources, served up by AWS at any given moment based on resource requirements. AppDynamics now offers a way to trace transactions on this type of infrastructure.

Finally, now that it’s part of the Cisco family, the product is looking not only at the application layer, it is expanding that vision to incorporate the networking infrastructure as well to help understand issues and set policies just as it does with applications.

All of this is part of what Cisco is calling a “central nervous system” for enterprise computing. It’s a marketing term designed to encompasses the overall vision of trying to locate issues, find the causes and fix them in an as automated way as possible across the enterprise computing landscape.

Steemit, an early blockchain startup that’s developing an alternative to Reddit, has a new chief less than two months after laying off most of its staff as part of cost-cutting measures.

Celebrated as an early success story in the crypto world, the company shed 70 percent of its employees back in November on account of the ‘crypto winter’ which has seen the price of Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies plummet by 90 percent or so. Steemit is far from the only blockchain startup forced to restructure, and now its rebuilding plans rest in the hands of newly-appointed managing director Elizabeth Powell.

Formerly the company’s head of communications and advocacy, Powell has replaced former CEO Ned Scott — who is now executive chairman — at the helm of the business, which has 12 full-time staff.

“We recently published our updated Mission, Vision and Values, as well as its roadmap focusing on increasing ad revenues, protecting Steem assets’ value and cost reductions. My job is to execute the roadmap,” Powell said in a post introducing her to the community.

Founded in July 2016, Steemit was an early blockchain project that showed promise and, with over a million registered users, it has been one of the most successful in terms of adoption. The premise is a Reddit-like space that is supposedly decentralized — so not subject to removals — and where users are compensated in tokens for creating or curating popular content.

However, like many blockchain startups, it has so far failed to compete with existing services on the internet and offer a truly differentiated experience that appeals to users outside of the crypto community. 

Its ‘Steem’ token, meanwhile, has suffered as the market has crashed. Valued at $7.31 during its peak in January 2018, it is currently priced at $0.41, according to CoinMarketCap.com. Unlike others, the company didn’t hold an ICO, instead it opted to mine tokens, but still those falling prices mean loyalists and the company have lost the paper value of their investments.

One major positive to adopting tokens is that, when used to raise capital, they can alleviate financial concerns and allow companies and services to focus entirely on the user experience without prioritizing monetize. But, following its financial wobbles, Steemit is testing advertising “as part of our strategy for improving the economic sustainability and decentralization of Steem.” That’s certainly controversial but, as Powell wrote, it is now very much part of the roadmap.

Powell is a relative newcomer to Steemit, having only joined the company last year. In response to her appointment, some users raised concern at her relative inexperience on the site — she has published just one original post and shared a further two  — but others suggested that the appointment of an ‘outsider’ brings a new perspective that can help wider Steemit’s audience.

Either way, Powell certainly has a challenge on her hands if Steemit is to fulfill its early promise.

Note: The author owns a small amount of cryptocurrency. Enough to gain an understanding, not enough to change a life.

One in every three dogs gets cancer, according to the National Canine Cancer Foundation. OneHealth, a startup that just raised a $5 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz’s Bio fund with participation from Lerer Hippeau and Y Combinator, aims to make it easier for humans to treat canine cancer, which is the number one disease killer of pups.

“Prevalence and incidence for cancer is much higher with dogs,” OneHealth founder and CEO Christina Lopes told TechCrunch over the phone.

OneHealth’s Fidocure product is designed to make treating your dog’s cancer more accessible and affordable. It specifically utilizes next-generation gene sequencing to better understand the genetic mutation that is causing an individual dog’s cancer. From there, Fidocare offers recommendations and an action plan to the human, outlining the best therapeutic implications and targeted treatment.

“The purpose of the company is actionability,” Lopes said. “The test is the first step. From there, if there’s a certain mutation present, we’ll say what the FDA-approve drugs with data in dogs available are. We’ve been able to then work with pharmaceutical partners and other compounding pharmacies.”

If your dog gets diagnosed with cancer, your veterinarian may recommend OneHealth’s product. Still, you’ll continue to take your pup to the veterinarian, as OneHealth says it is “100 percent partnered with veterinarians,” who must be able to see the furry friend in real life.

The drugs recommended are FDA approved for humans, but do have data relevant to dogs. That’s where OneHealth says it’s invested time and money in understanding those targeted drugs and their impact on dogs.

“While we didn’t develop the drugs, we’ve had to be the ones to do a lot more to close the information gap,” Lopes said.

OneHealth charges veterinarians directly. From there, the vet may or may not charge the patient. Average cancer care for dogs cost $6,700, Lopes said. With markup, OneHealth is designed to cost less than the average cost of care, she said.

“Advances in our understanding of cancer biology have revolutionized how we diagnose and treat human cancers,” A16Z GP Jorge Conde said in a statement. “As research continues to uncover similarities between certain dog and human cancers, OneHealth not only will harness these advances to transform how we care for our pets, but also has a unique opportunity to impact human health as it discovers better ways to manage this devastating disease in dogs.”

LG has put out a gesture-heavy hint ahead of the annual unveiling of new smartphone hardware at the world’s biggest mobile confab, Mobile World Congress, which kicks off in a month’s time.

The brief video teaser for its forthcoming MWC press event in Barcelona, which was shared today via LG’s social media channels, shows a man’s hand swiping to change on screen content, including the message “goodbye touch”.

The title of LG’s teaser video includes the name “LG Premiere”, which could be the name of the forthcoming flagship — albeit that would be confusingly similar to the mid-tier LG Premier of yore. So, hopefully the company is going to make that last ‘e’ really count.

Beyond some very unsubtle magic wand sound effects to draw extra attention to the contactless gestures, the video offers very little to go on. But we’re pretty sure LG is not about to pivot away from touchscreens entirely.

Rather we’re betting on some sort of Leap Motion -style gesture control interface being added to the front of the handset, using sensors to detect a hovering hand, for example — probably accompanied by heavy marketing about how filthy-with-germs phone screens are so it’s totally better you don’t actually touch them.

Safe to say, the idea looks terribly gimmicky. Or, well, just terrible. This kind of stuff has been tried (and failed to stick) plenty of times before — as long ago as a decade, in the now no longer mobile-maker Sony Ericcson’s case.

Samsung also added a gesture feature, called Air Gesture, to some of its handsets more than five years old — which lets smartphone users do things like wave to answer a call or swipe through air to scroll up. Some of its smartphones also offer hands-free scrolling via facial tracking.

Yet smartphone users everywhere still seem as hooked as ever on actually fingering their touchscreens. And gesture-based interfaces have, fittingly enough, largely failed to stick.

Although you could view Apple’s Face ID technology as a form of non-touch gesture control, as my TC colleague Ingrid Lunden suggests. Albeit the primary point in that case is security/authentication, so it’s more than just a frictionless way to interact with a device without touching it.

Smartphone makers — and Android OEMs especially — are under acute pressure to stand out in a fiercely competitive and growth-stalled market. So despite a flighty history for gesture interfaces on mobile, a bunch of hardware experiments look to be in play, such as whatever LG’s cooking.

And including — as we noted earlier today — what’s now open flirtation with foldable tablet smartphones (see: Xiaomi teased a double folder phone.)

We’ll be on the ground in Barcelona to bring you news of all the major hardware releases next month — including keeping an eye on whatever LG is preparing to unbox (but not actually touch) on February 24. So stay tuned.

We just hope that another detail in LG’s description for the teaser video, in which it asks its followers whether they’re “prepared to get stunned by the LG Premiere”, does not augur a highly potent new form of contactless haptic feedback.

Amazon launched an Echo Wall Clock before the end of the last year but, less than a month later, things aren’t running to schedule. The e-commerce giant has paused the sale of the $30 Alexa-powered smart clock after a number of customers reported connectivity issues, according to The Verge.

The clock is still listed on Amazon but, as of Tuesday, it is “currently unavailable.”

“We’re aware that a small number of customers have had issues with connectivity. We’re working hard to address this and plan to make Echo Wall Clock available again in the coming weeks,” Amazon told The Verge in a statement.

The clock is pitched at existing Alexa users who could use it to set timers, countdowns or alarms, while it automatically adjusts to seasonal time changes. It is unashamedly basic, both in design as well as functionality, but it is an interesting addition to Amazon’s expanding home appliance push. That also includes an Alexa microwave (less impressive), a singing fish (ok…) along the more established cast of home speakers, the ‘Show’ video screen, a subwoofer and more.

Amazon launched an Echo Wall Clock before the end of the last year but, less than a month later, things aren’t running to schedule. The e-commerce giant has paused the sale of the $30 Alexa-powered smart clock after a number of customers reported connectivity issues, according to The Verge.

The clock is still listed on Amazon but, as of Tuesday, it is “currently unavailable.”

“We’re aware that a small number of customers have had issues with connectivity. We’re working hard to address this and plan to make Echo Wall Clock available again in the coming weeks,” Amazon told The Verge in a statement.

The clock is pitched at existing Alexa users who could use it to set timers, countdowns or alarms, while it automatically adjusts to seasonal time changes. It is unashamedly basic, both in design as well as functionality, but it is an interesting addition to Amazon’s expanding home appliance push. That also includes an Alexa microwave (less impressive), a singing fish (ok…) along the more established cast of home speakers, the ‘Show’ video screen, a subwoofer and more.

China’s Xiaomi has become the latest smartphone maker to tease a folding smartphone, dropping the below video clip of its president and co-founder, Bin Lin, fondling the device on social media today.

The twist is the tablet does not have a single center parting but rather two folds that divide it into three panels, with Xiaomi claiming in a tweet: “It is the world’s first ever double folding phone.”

The video shows Bin contemplating a tablet-sized touchscreen device before quickly turning it on its side, taking it into landscape orientation, where he performs the party trick — folding two panels of screen, one at each side, back behind the tablet to form a slightly chunky looking phablet.

The video is edited so it cuts from front view to back at the moment of the fold so the actual folding action is not seen from the front. But from the back the two folded wings go dark after being folded.

When the video cuts back to the front there’s a slight spinning of the screen, as the software appears to grapple momentarily with the new form factor, before it stablizes in portrait orientation.

The phablet form of the device resembles the bezel-less ‘infinity display’ design of a handset like the 2018 Samsung Galaxy S8. Albeit more squat looking than the tall 18.5:9 aspect ratio of the S8.

Xiaomi’s tweet teaser does not include any details about how near (or indeed far off) a market launch of the device might be. We’ve reached out to the company with questions about the prototype and any launch plans.

Update: A spokesman pointed us to a post on Bin’s Weibo account where he asks his followers for feedback on the prototype, and suggests Xiaomi is still weighing up whether to bring the folding phone to market, writing: “If you like it, we will consider making a mass production machine in the future.”

He also asks for name suggestions, saying Xiaomi is toying with two: Xiaomi Dual Flex or Xiaomi MIX Flex.

“This symmetrical double-folded form perfectly combines the experience of the tablet and mobile phone, which is both practical and beautiful,” he writes [translated via Google Translate], saying building the prototype entailed “conquering a series of technical problems such as flexible folding screen technology, four-wheel drive folding shaft technology, flexible cover technology, and MIUI adaptation”.

“We made the first folding screen mobile phone, which should be the world’s first double folding mobile phone,” he adds, again taking a tentative tone vis-a-vis a potential launch timeframe.

In recent months a handful of folding smartphone prototypes have been demoed by mobile makers, including a booklet-style folding slab from Samsung — trailed as incoming for years but finally teased officially last fall — which also appears to transforms into a rather chunky handset.

An invite to a February 20 Samsung launch event for the forthcoming Galaxy S10, sent out to press two weeks ago, also included a conspicuous centerfold in its graphic teaser. Ergo, a commercial launch from Samsung looks imminent.

While, at CES, a little known Chinese OEM called Royole beat others to the punch by showing off a folder in the flesh. In tablet form the Android powered FlexPai, as the device was christened, is 7.8-inches. But once folded in half the gizmo is left with an unsightly gap between the screen pieces, bulking up the resulting smartphone.  

Xiaomi’s triptych looks to offer a more pleasing design for handling the inevitable air gap created by a folding screen by concealing the ends in the middle of the dual folded panels. Side tucks certainly look more visually pleasing.

That said, two folds could mean a higher risk of screen problems — if the folding mechanism isn’t robust enough to handle lots of bending back and forth.

It’s also far from clear whether consumers will generally take to folding phones, or snub them as fiddly and gimmicky.

In recent years smartphone design has converged around a phablet-sized touchscreen and little else. So adding any fresh mechanical complication is a bit of a risk given how smooth and hermetically sealed smartphones have otherwise become.

But a clutch of Android OEMs are going to try their luck, regardless. And with a saturated smartphone market, stalled growth and competition fiercer than ever you can see why they’re pushing the boat out — or, well, bending the screen back — to try and stand out.

China’s Xiaomi has become the latest smartphone maker to tease a folding smartphone, dropping the below video clip of its president and co-founder, Bin Lin, fondling the device on social media today.

The twist is the tablet does not have a single center parting but rather two folds that divide it into three panels, with Xiaomi claiming in a tweet: “It is the world’s first ever double folding phone.”

The video shows Bin contemplating a tablet-sized touchscreen device before quickly turning it on its side, taking it into landscape orientation, where he performs the party trick — folding two panels of screen, one at each side, back behind the tablet to form a slightly chunky looking phablet.

The video is edited so it cuts from front view to back at the moment of the fold so the actual folding action is not seen from the front. But from the back the two folded wings go dark after being folded.

When the video cuts back to the front there’s a slight spinning of the screen, as the software appears to grapple momentarily with the new form factor, before it stablizes in portrait orientation.

The phablet form of the device resembles the bezel-less ‘infinity display’ design of a handset like the 2018 Samsung Galaxy S8. Albeit more squat looking than the tall 18.5:9 aspect ratio of the S8.

Xiaomi’s tweet teaser does not include any details about how near (or indeed far off) a market launch of the device might be. We’ve reached out to the company with questions about the prototype and any launch plans.

Update: A spokesman pointed us to a post on Bin’s Weibo account where he asks his followers for feedback on the prototype, and suggests Xiaomi is still weighing up whether to bring the folding phone to market, writing: “If you like it, we will consider making a mass production machine in the future.”

He also asks for name suggestions, saying Xiaomi is toying with two: Xiaomi Dual Flex or Xiaomi MIX Flex.

“This symmetrical double-folded form perfectly combines the experience of the tablet and mobile phone, which is both practical and beautiful,” he writes [translated via Google Translate], saying building the prototype entailed “conquering a series of technical problems such as flexible folding screen technology, four-wheel drive folding shaft technology, flexible cover technology, and MIUI adaptation”.

“We made the first folding screen mobile phone, which should be the world’s first double folding mobile phone,” he adds, again taking a tentative tone vis-a-vis a potential launch timeframe.

In recent months a handful of folding smartphone prototypes have been demoed by mobile makers, including a booklet-style folding slab from Samsung — trailed as incoming for years but finally teased officially last fall — which also appears to transforms into a rather chunky handset.

An invite to a February 20 Samsung launch event for the forthcoming Galaxy S10, sent out to press two weeks ago, also included a conspicuous centerfold in its graphic teaser. Ergo, a commercial launch from Samsung looks imminent.

While, at CES, a little known Chinese OEM called Royole beat others to the punch by showing off a folder in the flesh. In tablet form the Android powered FlexPai, as the device was christened, is 7.8-inches. But once folded in half the gizmo is left with an unsightly gap between the screen pieces, bulking up the resulting smartphone.  

Xiaomi’s triptych looks to offer a more pleasing design for handling the inevitable air gap created by a folding screen by concealing the ends in the middle of the dual folded panels. Side tucks certainly look more visually pleasing.

That said, two folds could mean a higher risk of screen problems — if the folding mechanism isn’t robust enough to handle lots of bending back and forth.

It’s also far from clear whether consumers will generally take to folding phones, or snub them as fiddly and gimmicky.

In recent years smartphone design has converged around a phablet-sized touchscreen and little else. So adding any fresh mechanical complication is a bit of a risk given how smooth and hermetically sealed smartphones have otherwise become.

But a clutch of Android OEMs are going to try their luck, regardless. And with a saturated smartphone market, stalled growth and competition fiercer than ever you can see why they’re pushing the boat out — or, well, bending the screen back — to try and stand out.