Welcome to the first issue of the new More Evenly Distributed newsletter! This weekly newsletter will bring you the most impactful stories and emerging trends that may shape your future.
Signals from the future:
Emerging trends that are likely to drive changes to the way we live, work and do business.
- Texas Molten Salt Nuclear Reactor Planned for 2026 - NextBigFuture.com - Texas will research and develop molten salt nuclear reactors by constructing a 1 MWt low-power molten salt research reactor. Success here could open the door to alternative nuclear power generation that might get over the NIMBYs.
- Parents Furious After Deepfaked Nudes of Daughters Circulate at Schools - Futurism It was only a matter of time for this to happen and will definitely accelerate development of synthetic media detection and marking.
- California grid battery capacity increases 10x in 3 years - Canarymedia) And is on track to have 80% of their grid covered in the next 4 years.
- Samsung Unveils Samsung Food: A Cutting-Edge Food Integration Platform - Impact Lab – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience) An amazing vision of extraordinary vertical and horizontal integration where the kitchen appliances and personal mobile devices are all integrated to provide a full picture of health and nutrition.
- How Private Companies and NASA’s Artemis Accords Will Shape the Future of Space Law - Australian Institute of International Affairs - With more countries and private entities pursuing projects in space and the Moon, "space law" is becoming a thing.
- Agility’s New Factory Can Crank Out 10,000 Humanoid Robots a Year - Singularity Hub - Starting in 2025 you can order your 5ft 9in robot that can run for 16 hours before needing to charge.
- Pricing In The End of Obesity - Livewire - Anti-obesity drugs set to be the "blockbuster" of the next decade and investors are starting to price in pharmaceutical manufacturers.
Focus Issue: Technoableism
I've spent most of my professional career "building things" and tend to focus on building things for people who are somehow disadvantaged. I've worked with aged care, disability care and social justice organisations in both Australia and Canada. It has been really exciting for me to watch the progress of AI technologies, in particular vision and text generation, and consider how these technologies will impact people with extraordinary needs.
Reading this article was a bit of a slap in the face (in the best way possible): https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2023/09/25/technoableism-disability-ashley-shew/. The author:
Far too often, when people write and talk about technology and disability, stories are deeply shaped by ableism. Often when devices are painted as “solving the problem of disability” or “empowering disabled people,” they suggest that being disabled is itself a problem, and that people should try to be as nondisabled as possible.
To say that this article (and the others in the symposium) has brought about a fresh perspective in me is a gross understatement. I encourage you to read them and follow along as new articles are released.
Now from this perspective of complete empathy, there are some interesting developments in the use of AI and advanced technologies for people living with a disability:
- How People with Disabilities Are Using AI to Improve Their Lives | NOVA | PBS
- Designing Generative AI to Work for People with Disabilities (hbr.org)
- Empowering Individuals With Disabilities Through AI Technology (forbes.com)
- Innovation and AI for Accessibility | Microsoft Accessibility
Perhaps most relevant is the development of a Framework for artificial intelligence-enabled assistive technologies (AT) published by CSIRO for NDIS. The framework was developed with focus groups across a range of AT, with a focus across 6 key principles: User Experience, Value, Quality, Safety, Privacy and Human Rights.
Clearly this is an area where we will continue to see amazing progress with assistive technologies, I just hope we can do it without being ableist.
Business at the Point of Impact
Emerging issues and technology trends can change the way we work and do business. These articles tend to be longer form and are rich with insights:
The 10 Biggest Business Trends For 2024 Everyone Must Be Ready For Now - Forbes - Innovation - With the general global economic downturn predicted to get worse before it gets better, companies are likely to remain cautious when it comes to spending and investing in radical new ideas in 2024. As it becomes increasingly feasible to automate technical aspects of work - coding, research, or data management, for example - the ability to leverage soft skills for tasks that still require a human touch becomes critical.
Could Generative AI Out-Entrepreneur Humans? Maybe, but Here's What Matters More. - Kellogg Insight - We can all probably agree that generative AI has the algorithm thing down better than we humans do—and as a bonus, AI-based technologies can theoretically perform each of those business-building steps while considering more novel creative possibilities than we could and avoiding bias. Because entrepreneurship, at its core, is algorithmic, based on the underlying sequence of sense-act-learn: it’s about sensing or identifying patterns in terms of meaningful, addressable gaps in consumer needs, acting by iteratively creating and testing solutions to fill those gaps, taking the product or service that emerges from that process to market, and learning at each step to revisit and refine the offering.
Full throttle on net zero: Creating value in the face of uncertainty - McKinsey & Company - McKinsey research on the 2007–08 financial crisis shows that outperforming companies tended to take a few courses of action to create an earnings advantage, including proactively cutting costs and identifying areas of growth. The advantage of being an early mover in these new markets is that companies can solidify pole position for offering low-carbon goods and build out production capacity before latecomers enter the market.
Other links
Here are some other media worth your time:
- Conveying The AI Revolution to the Board: The role of the CIO in the era of Generative AI - Forbes - Innovation - It’s essential first to grasp the board members’ primary concern: value addition to the business. However, how can CIOs convey this tidal wave of change to the board?
- Reinventing The CIO Role: Driving Growth and Innovation - Forbes - Innovation - Although the traditional responsibilities of managing IT departments, maintaining hardware and software, and ensuring data security are still crucial, the advent of the digital era has catapulted CIOs into a more prominent role. The CIO is the one who not only monitors IT infrastructure but can own the end-to-end view across the organization to ensure the culture of adaptability needed in today’s world.
- How To Approach AI Adoption Ethically and Responsibly Within Your Organization - Forbes - Small Business - For this reason, investing heavily in artificial technology training is essential to approach AI adoption ethically and responsibly within your organisation.
- The Indispensable Role of Middle Management in The AI Era - Forbes - Innovation - Rather than witnessing the end of middle management, we may actually be entering an era where the skill sets typical of these roles will be more critical than ever before.
- Generative AI: How will it affect future jobs and workflows? - McKinsey - On this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, findings from McKinsey’s latest report on gen AI are discussed and explain why companies must pivot to embrace the technology itself and the deep and lasting changes it may create.
- What is prompt engineering? - McKinsey & Company - A brief overview of prompt engineering and how some businesses are deploying AI.
