Technology

Amazon and Microsoft to team up

Amazon and Microsoft are teaming up to get their virtual assistants to talk to each other.

Someone with an Amazon Echo smart speaker might use Cortana to book a meeting or to check a calendar, Amazon suggested in a press release announcing the news on Wednesday. Or Cortana users could control their smart home via Alexa.

When the feature becomes available later in 2017, users will access one virtual assistant via the other (at least at first) by saying "Alexa, open Cortana," or "Cortana, open Alexa," then give their command.

In a statement, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said: "Ensuring Cortana is available for our customers everywhere and across any device is a key priority for us. Bringing Cortana's knowledge, Office 365 integration, commitments, and reminders to Alexa is a great step toward that goal."

Volvo's battery-infused car

In 2013, Volvo announced a potentially revolutionary approach to designing electric vehicles (EVs). It wanted to replace some of the steel body panels in its cars with carbon fiber composite materials that can store power like a battery.

The rechargeable panels would be composed of multiple layers of carbon fiber, which are insulated from each other by fiberglass inserts. The result is a structural component that can be charged like the battery.

Though this new design would reduce weight problems associated with rechargeable car batteries, it was not without its problems. In the event that the car crashes, emergency crews would essentially be trying to fish someone out of a giant damaged battery. The cost of carbon fiber was also quite high. Due to these issues, Volvo decided not to mass produce its new cars.

Autonomous bus service in Tochigi

A test of self-driving bus services organized by the transport ministry kicked off in Tochigi Prefecture on Saturday.

The ministry hopes to launch the autonomous bus services in fiscal 2020 to provide a means of transportation for elderly people living in hilly and mountainous areas with dwindling populations.

The ministry hopes automated public transport services will help elderly people who have trouble visiting hospitals or shopping because they can no longer drive or their bus services have been canceled.

“The ride was comfortable,” one participant said, adding, “I also enjoyed the views from the large window.” 

View a picture of the bus here

The iPhone success paradox

Not every successful product is “the best” product in its category.

The point of Ikea or Toyota isn’t to be the greatest, most high-end offering in the realm of houseware or cars, the point is to meet a practical consumer need at an attractive price. There are Ferraris and Porsches in the marketplace, too, but making “the best” car isn’t necessarily a more successful business strategy than making a good enough car at a reasonable price.

But the iPhone is different. From the day it was first introduced, it was positioned in the market as the best phone in the world. But it’s also become the best-selling phone in the world. And like any marquee smartphone, it needs to be updated and upgraded every year.

Self-driving tractors in Japan

Major Japanese agricultural machinery makers are developing self-driving tractors. The government plans to support the introduction of these  tractors amid growing hopes that such machines will help farmers cope with labor shortages at a time when many are aging and face difficulties finding successors.

In June 2017, Kubota Corp. started selling the country’s first tractors with autonomous driving functions on a trial basis. Utilizing the Global Positioning System (GPS), the tractors can keep tabs on where they are operating.

As the machines still need to be monitored, Kubota assumes that farmers will operate two tractors at a time, one with a driver and the other unmanned. Having two tractors operate simultaneously in this way on farmland with an area of 3,000-5,000 sq. meters would reduce the work time by around 30 percent, according to Satoshi Iida, a senior managing executive officer of Kubota.

Softbank to invest big in A.I.

At SoftBank Group's annual shareholders meeting in Tokyo on Wednesday, founder and chief executive Masayoshi Son said: "Some say SoftBank is a mobile phone company, but that's wrong [...] We are an information revolution company. A cellphone is just a device. From now on, we will be in an age where all infrastructure will be connected by information networks."

Son has about 30 targets lined up in emerging sectors such as artificial intelligence, robotics and the internet of things. SoftBank, he made it clear, intends to be at the forefront of all these fields.

Softbank invests $502m in startup

"[UK tech startup] Improbable is building breakthrough technologies that are becoming vital and valuable platforms for the global gaming industry," Deep Nishar, managing director of investments at SoftBank, said in a statement. Beyond gaming, Nishar said, SoftBank believed Improbable’s simulation technology could be used to help explore disease, improve cities, understand economies and solve other complex problems. Nishar is joining Improbable’s board.

Singularity will occur by 2047

Singularity—the point when machine intelligence surpasses our own and goes on to improve itself at an exponential rate—will happen by 2050, according to Masayoshi Son, the Japanese tech mogul leading SoftBank.

In 2017 he said: "I totally believe this concept. In the next 30 years, this will become a reality."

Son went on to say that our world will fundamentally change as a result of so-called superintelligences that will be able to learn and think for themselves, TechCrunch reports.

Son added that he expects one computer chip to have the equivalent of a 10,000 IQ within the next 30 years, Bloomberg reported.

When will robots replace workers?

The falling cost of industrial robots will allow manufacturers to use them to replace more factory workers over the next decade while lowering labor costs, according to new research.

Robots now perform roughly 10 percent of manufacturing tasks that can be done by machines, according to the Boston Consulting Group. The management consulting firm projected that to rise to about 25 percent of such "automatable" tasks by 2025.

In turn, labor costs stand to drop by 16 percent on average globally over that time, according to the research.

The shift will mean an increasing demand for skilled workers who can operate the machines, said Hal Sirkin, a senior partner at Boston Consulting.

Factory workers "will be higher paid but there will be fewer of them," Sirkin said.

Software will replace doctors

According to Keith Rabois, a Khosla Ventures partner and former executive at LinkedIn, PayPal, and Square, areas that require human expert judgment, like healthcare and law, are most likely to see disruption in the coming years.

"One of the most interesting things we’ve noticed over the last decade is the ability of math and machines to replace human judgment, particularly expert judgment," Rabois said on Founder Calls, a new podcast run by Box CEO Aaron Levie.

"And it’s finally possible now to use data and machine learning techniques to replace the judgment of experts in law and in healthcare," he said.

When robots collude

Algorithms can learn to collude. 

Two law professors, Ariel Ezrachi of Oxford and Maurice E. Stucke of the University of Tennessee, have a working paper on how when computers get involved in pricing for goods and services (say, at Amazon or Uber), the potential for collusion is even greater than when humans are making the prices. 

Computers can't have a back-room conversation to fix prices, but they can predict the way that other computers are going to behave. And with that information, they can effectively cooperate with each other in advancing their own profit-maximizing interests.

Sometimes, a computer is just a tool used to help humans collude, which theoretically can be prosecuted. But sometimes, the authors find, the computer learns to collude on its own. Can a machine be prosecuted?

Solar cheaper than fossil fuels

The renewable energy future will arrive when installing new solar panels is cheaper than a comparable investment in coal, natural gas or other options. If you ask the World Economic Forum (WEF), the day has arrived.

Solar and wind is now the same price or cheaper than new fossil fuel capacity in more than 30 countries, the WEF reported in December. As prices for solar and wind power continue their precipitous fall, two-thirds of all nations will reach the point known as “grid parity” within a few years, even without subsidies. “Renewable energy has reached a tipping point,” Michael Drexler, who leads infrastructure and development investing at the WEF, said in a statement. “It is not only a commercially viable option, but an outright compelling investment opportunity with long term, stable, inflation-protected returns.”