NEXT with John Koetsier

Think about it: AI chooses your next song in Spotify, your next video in YouTube, your next news item in Flipboard, which updates from friends and family you see on Facebook, and more.

Recently I had the opportunity to moderate a discussion between three AI experts: Danny Lange, who led AI at Uber and Amazon before jumping to Unity; Beena Ammanath, Executive Director of Deloitte AI Institute and Founder of Humans for AI; Cindy Gordon, CEO of SalesChoice and a writer at Forbes.

We chatted about:

Please enjoy … along with a new intro style and new intro music!

What changes when quantum computing is mainstream?

Quantum computing is on the far reaches of science, using technology that accesses aspects of matter at quantum scales where physics almost overlaps with magic. 

Classical computing is simple: deterministic. You have something, or you have nothing. Quantum computing is complex: you can have something, or nothing, or both something and nothing at the same time. If that’s hard to wrap your head around, you’re in good company. Even Richard Feyman, 1965 Nobel Laureate in Physics and one of the founders of quantum computing famously said, “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.”

But we’re seeing major advancements in quantum computing today. You can now write a program and deploy it on quantum computers from anywhere. And D-Wave says that it's doubling qubits every 2 years.

In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier we’re chatting with Alan Baratz, president and CEO of D-Wave.

There’s a brand-new sensor in the iPhone 12 Pro, and it’s a big clue about the future of technology. 

Already just 1 month after iPhone 12 launch, the phone accounts for 5% of new uploads to Sketchfab, the largest global platform for immersive and interactive 3D models. It's much faster, high-quality especially at room-scale, but not the best at small-scale objects.

In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with Alban Denoyal, the CEO of Sketchfab about why.

And about the implications of 3D scanning: where it's used, what it can do, and what it's changing in augmented reality, mixed reality, VR, and more.

I've always wanted a Star Trek tricorder ... a mobile sensor unit that tells you all about the world around you. (Who doesn't?) Now a company in Germany, Trinamix, has partnered with Qualcomm to deliver mobile spectroscopy in mobile phones.

No attachments required. All onboard your smartphone.

The first applications are in skin care and cosmetics, but the tech can also sense what is on your plate to help you record your diet, or tell you the composition of just about anything around you.

In this edition of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with Dr. Wilfried Hermes, the director of IR sensing for Trinamix.

Do deepfakes foreshadow the fall of civilization and the end of all truth? Or are they just good fun? 

Or is there a third possibility: that they're the foundation of a massive new opportunity to experience what could never be real (for most of us) and a massive new opportunity (for influencers and stars) to essentially become a merger of real person and synthetic being in millions of ways in dozens of languages for billions of people ... simultaneously.

In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier we chat with Dima Shvets, one of the cofounders of Reface.ai, the viral app with almost 70 million installs.

We kick off with the app growth story. We move into the deepfake controversy. And we end with Dima's vision of the future: a merge of real and synthetic beings for brands, stars, and influencers.

Video: https://youtu.be/WwB8iHrHPGY

Transcript: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/

Are robot chefs the future of food? We chat with Buck Jordan, the cofounder of Miso Robotics, which makes Flippy … the robot that cooks.

We talk about the future of robots in restaurant kitchens, whether this is killing jobs or not, what's available now and what's coming next. We also chat about home kitchens: whether we'll get robots to cook all our food in our homes ... and when that might be affordable.

Buck's project: that's about 10 years away.

Did you know your computer transmits a log of every single app you open? Apple has made privacy a core part of the brand -- including entire TV commercials dedicated to it -- but as a self-described hacker and security researcher recently found, every Mac sends a stream of data about every app you open (and more) to Apple.

And ... sends it unencrypted. And … bypasses any local VPN software you’ve installed.

In this edition of TechFirst with John Koetsier we're chatting with Jeffrey Paul, the hacker who found and wrote about the problem. We chat with him about why Apple did this, who else could see the data, what Apple's changing, and what this means for the future of computers.

(Hint: it's not great.)

Former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold spent 18 months building a custom 100MP camera to take pictures of snowflakes. We chat with him about why :-) and how, which includes equipment from Japan and Canada and trips to Alaska and Yellowknife and Timmons, Ontario.

Myhrvold also chats about what drives him to continue inventing and learning.

He's a polymath, and while best known for being the CTO of Microsoft, he's the founder of Intellectual Ventures, has more than 850 patents to his name, and has written 1000s of pages of recipes for his cookbook series … published peer-reviewed research on planetary science plus written about paleontology … climate science … and worked with Stephen Hawking on quantum theories of gravitation.

We also learn about Nathan Myrvold's latest project: a massive high-resolution picture of the Milky Way galaxy.

In the future, most work might be done by robots, but right now, most is done by humans. How do we manage the transition? And, what does a humans + robots economy look like?

In this episode of TechFirst I chat with Lior Elazary, CEO of inVia Robotics. 

Questions we discuss:

- What is robotics as a service (RaaS)?

- How can you ultimately get the best contributions out of what humans can do and what robots can provide?

- What kinds of productivity gains are you seeing from robots?

- What size of warehouse works best?

- Does this change how big warehouses need to be?

- What are we learning now about the future of automation?

- How do you see the world of work in 10-20 years?

Is AI, robotics, and … verticality … about to change farming as we know it? In this episode of TechFirst we chat with Nate Storey, the cofounder and chief science officer of Plenty.

Plenty grows food vertically, indoors, anywhere on the planet. A 2-acre Plenty farm produces as much food as a 750-acre traditional "flat farm." We chat about how Plenty uses AI and robotics to increase yield, what crops Plenty offers and will offer, and the company's plans for expansion.