NEXT with John Koetsier

What if the very things we want big social platforms to do to stop the spread of extremism, racism, propaganda, and lies is actually causing more problems than it solves?

Many of us want YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter to manage and moderate what people say. Others, who value free speech higher than social harms that its exercise might cost, say that muzzling people is unethical and in some countries illegal. The big social platforms are in the crosshairs either way, and that's one of the reasons Elon Musk is buying Twitter.

But where do people go when they get kicked off the big platforms for spreading covid misinformation or saying unacceptable things? According to some, they go places that just make things worse.

In this episode of TechFirst, we chat with Daryl Davis, a black musician who has convinced 200 KKK members to stop being racist, and Bill Ottman, the CEO of alternative social network Minds.com. 

Our questions:

- why are we so divided?

- aren't we seeing more racism lately? why?

- should any speech be censored?

- should social platforms open source their algorithms?

- what's the solution to the division and anger we're experiencing?

- how do we bridge our reality bubbles?

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Who's winning in the media and entertainment battles? We are currently seeing an epic battle in the mobile space for consumer time, attention, and dollars.

Two of the biggest juggernauts are short video versus long ... think Netflix vs TikTok, Disney+ vs Reels, with many more combatants and some like YouTube and Facebook with stakes in both sides.

What’s happening here … and who’s going to win? And why did Tiktok just have the biggest quarter of any mobile app ever?

In this TechFirst, we chat with Data.ai CEO Ted Krantz.

Links:

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Catawba Indian Nation in Rock Hill, South Carolina has established a new Special Economic Zone where the tribe will provide space and regulatory certainty for crypto and fintech companies.

It's called the Catawba Digital Economic Zone, and the Catawba Corporation says it "can be prosperous thanks to the ability of Native-American Tribes under US law to have their own commercial code, regulation-making and administrative capacities." Catawba is a sovereign jurisdiction under U.S. law, allowing it to built a regulatory framework that is friendly to fintech, blockchain, and crypto companies, says Ronnie Beck, CEO of Catawba Corporations.

The closest similarity?

Estonia's eResidency program.

In this episode of TechFirst we chat with the CEO of the CDEZ, Joseph McKinney, and Thomas Trimnal, a VP at Catawba Corporations. Our focus: what will the enable, who will come, and how will this generate value for both companies and the Catawba themselves.

Links:

Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/

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BMW sells 2.5 million cars and 194,000 motorcycles annually, almost all in a traditional car dealership. But the 100-year-old car brand wants to sell cars online, just like Tesla.

Now BMW is embarking on a major project with Adobe to get "phygital" ... to be able to do business seamlessly across apps, websites, and physical car dealerships, however its clients prefer. That means data, insights, software, and a complete rethinking of how its thousands of car dealerships interact with customers.

And, of course, how customers interact with BMW ... including before they buy, when they buy, and for years of owning their vehicles. In this TechFirst, we chat with BMW SVP Jens Theimer.

Links:

Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/

Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work.

TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/

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Will super-smart artificial intelligence be the ultimate cheat code for beating the market? Probably not ... but its could ensure you retire with 25% more than you otherwise would.

In this TechFirst we chat with the CEO of Qraft USA, Robert Nestor. Qraft is an AI company focused on investing. The company has a billion USD "assets under AI" in Korea and is expanding to the US. While the AI is active in crafting the strategy and execution, humans still make the final decisions.

The result, so far, is about a 1% improvement on what financial advisors would otherwise get. While that doesn't sound huge, that's significant over your earning and investing lifespan.

Links:

Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/

Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work.

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Digital retail giant Amazon has over 200,000 robots helping deliver more than 350 million different products in an unceasing flood of billions of deliveries. Its fulfillment machine with both free and fast shipping has become a key competitive moat against other retailers: free shipping and 1-day or 2-day shipping is why Amazon customers chose Amazon.

So how can other retailers, whether giants like Walmart or smaller brands, compete? One way is by stealing a march on the e-commerce behemoth and automating themselves. 

In this episode of TechFirst, we chat with Locus Robotics CMO Karen Leavitt. Locus Robotics robots-as-a-service will pick more than a billion items in warehouse, fulfilment centers, and logistics hubs ... and the company just added more.

Links:

Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/

Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work.

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We have billions of smart things. How can we create a true internet of things with trillions? We won't ... unless we have a super-cheap, super-small, super-efficient chip that doesn't need a battery, has significant sensors and capability, and can be printed almost for free.

That "almost" is still a problem, but the Wiliot Pixel 2 is a computer the size of a postage stamp. There's no batteries. You don't plug it in. And it powers itself by harvesting the energy from ambient radio waves.

In this TechFirst, we chat with Wiliot exec Stephen Statler about the Pixel, about Wiliot's no-code applications in the cloud, and how he sees the future of IoT and IIoT. A big hint: expanding IoT at least 100X from where it is today to trillions of devices, not just billions.

And that is when we'll really see the benefits of smart matter, a smart supply chain, smart cities, smart factories, smart stores, smart homes, and much more ...

Links:

Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/

Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work.

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COR is an infrared spectrometer that measures your blood health and how the food you eat and the exercise that you engage in impacts it. The first product of its kind, COR was created by a former Apple Health exec who wanted to know: is my diet good for me?

Because everyone's response -- even to theoretically healthy foods -- is different. Even genetically identical twins don't have the same metabolic response to things, recent studies have shown.

So the idea with COR is that you analyze your blood at home via infrared spectrometry about 4 times over a 3-week period, and you get specific data and recommendations back about what's good -- and what's bad -- for your health.

The result, CEO Bob Messerschmidt says, is potentially the ability to have another 15 years of healthy, productive life.

Links:

Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/

Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work.

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MIT scientists are building ElectroVoxels, small, smart, self-assembling robots designed for space. 

It's programmable matter, infinitely recyclable large-scale 3D printing, if you will, and it could be the future of robotics and machinery in space. In this TechFirst, I chat with MIT PhD student Martin Nisser

"Rather than building a robot or a structure in a top-down manner, we envision robots or structures as these modules of hundreds or thousands of small components or modules that can rearrange themselves with respect to their neighbors," Nisser says. 

The mini-bots don't have actuators: they use "small, easily manufactured, inexpensive electromagnets into the edges of the cubes that repel and attract, allowing the robots to spin and move around each other and rapidly change shape."

Links:

Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/

Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work.

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Is neuromorphic computing the only way we can actually achieve general artificial intelligence? 

Very likely yes, according to Gordon Wilson, CEO of Rain Neuromorphics, who is trying to recreate the human brain in hardware and "give machines all of the capabilities that we recognize in ourselves."

Rain Neuromorphics has built a neuromorphic chip that is analog. In other words it does not simulate neural networks: it is a neural network in analog, not digital. It's a physical collection of neurons and synapses, as opposed to an abstraction of neurons and synapses. That means no ones and zeroes of traditional computing but voltages and currents that represent the mathematical operations you want to perform.

Right now it's 1000X more energy efficient than existing neural networks, Wilson says, because it doesn't have to spend all those computing cycles simulating the brain. The circuit is the neural network, which leads to some extraordinary gains in both speed improvement and power reduction, according to Wilson.

Links:

Rain Neuromorphics: https://rain.ai

Episode sponsor: SMRT1 https://smrt1.ca/

Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/

Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work.

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