Lifeboat Foundation

It’s true that this was a horrible year for many of the tech industry’s biggest companies. Amazon held a nationwide beauty pageant for its new headquarters, raising hopes that the company would help transform a struggling city, then picked the two places that needed it the least. Executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter got hauled before Congress to apologize for * gestures wildly in all directions*. One of Uber’s self-driving cars killed someone. And then there was Elon Musk.

But the tech sector is more than its giants.

Last year, I handed out “good tech” awards to a handful of companies, nonprofit organizations and people who used technology to help others in real, tangible ways. The goal was to shine a spotlight on a few less-heralded projects that may not get front-page headlines or billions of dollars in funding, but are actually trying to fulfill the tech industry’s stated goal of improving the world.

Continue reading “The 2018 Good Tech Awards” »

This electric truck can drive for 400 miles without recharging ⚡ 🚙.

They play a key role in the process.

In 2019, will Tesla become the world’s first automaker with a fully autonomous fleet on the road?

The Tesla CEO said the Hardware 3 upgrade has.

Can machines make moral choices?

A massive new survey developed by MIT researchers reveals some distinct global preferences concerning the ethics of autonomous vehicles, as well as some regional variations in those preferences.

The survey has global reach and a unique scale, with over 2 million online participants from over 200 countries weighing in on versions of a classic ethical conundrum, the “Trolley Problem.” The problem involves scenarios in which an accident involving a vehicle is imminent, and the vehicle must opt for one of two potentially fatal options. In the case of driverless cars, that might mean swerving toward a couple of people, rather than a large group of bystanders.

Continue reading “A self-driving car can choose who dies in a fatal crash. These are the ethical considerations” »

Power suits, robotaxis, Leonardo da Vinci mania—just a few of the things to look out for in 2019. But what else will make our top ten stories for the year ahead?

Click here to subscribe to The Economist on YouTube: https://econ.st/2xvTKdy

Continue reading “What will be the biggest stories of 2019? | Part One | The Economist” »

A team from Cornell is out to prove that water is all you need to send an aircraft flying in space. They will attempt to send a CubeSat, a tiny satellite no bigger than a cereal box, to orbit the moon.

Automation is on the right track.

The bot is helping automate mining operations Down Under.

The evidence that self-driving vehicle manufacturers aren’t always upfront with the public hasn’t helped either. An excoriating October New Yorker investigation into the early years of the Google self-driving research project that eventually became Waymo found that the company had performed reckless road tests early in its work — and hadn’t always reported accidents.

Road Ahead

Musk’s promise to accelerate fully autonomous research, along with a call for more internal Tesla testers for the program, run precisely counter to that narrative. That’s not surprising: the eccentric Musk is known for imagining futures that are still years away — and using his wealth and influence to attempt to steer history toward or away from them.