At its Google Marketing Live event, the tech giant announced the launch of Product Studio, an innovative tool powered by generative AI that enables merchants to easily create product imagery. Integrated within Merchant Center Next, Google’s platform for managing product visibility on the search engine, brands can now generate new imagery and extract more value from their existing images.
Product Studio empowers merchants by providing the ability to create product imagery at no cost, eliminating the need for expensive photoshoots. For instance, a skincare company could showcase a seasonal variant of a product by requesting an image featuring the product surrounded by peaches against a backdrop of tropical plants.
What if automakers could design their next popular vehicle in minutes for a fraction of the cost? That’s what General Motors and the MIT Sloan School of Management explored in a recent study, using a neural network to analyze data collected from GM clinics to determine what makes an attractive vehicle. By inputting images and scores given by attendees, the AI software trained itself to output an aesthetic rating for a given image. The program was able to predict with remarkable accuracy how consumers would rate vehicles, achieving a 74% agreement rate.
Next, the program used this information to design new vehicles that would score high aesthetically, based on parameters such as “make it Chevy-like.” Interestingly, some of the designs generated by the AI were strikingly similar to vehicles sold by automakers in 2020, despite the fact that they were not in the automaker’s lineup in 2014.
Rebar is laid before poring a cement slab for an apartment in San Francisco CA.
In the wake of COVID-19 this spring, construction sites across the nation emptied out alongside neighboring restaurants, retail stores, offices and other commercial establishments. Debates ensued over whether the construction industry’s seven million employees should be considered “essential,” while regulations continued to shift on the operation of job sites. Meanwhile, project demand steadily shrank.
Amidst the chaos, construction firms faced an existential question: How will they survive? This question is as relevant today as it was in April. As one of the least-digitized sectors of our economy, construction is ripe for technology disruption.
Construction is a massive, $1.3 trillion industry in the United States — a complex ecosystem of lenders, owners, developers, architects, general contractors, subcontractors and more. While each construction project has a combination of these key roles, the construction process itself is highly variable depending on the asset type. Roughly 41% of domestic construction value is in residential property, 25% in commercial property and 34% in industrial projects. Because each asset type, and even subassets within these classes, tends to involve a different set of stakeholders and processes, most construction firms specialize in one or a few asset groups.
India now has 38,756 officially-recognised start-ups –– with 27 unicorns, eight of which achieved this status in 2020 –– and is the third-largest tech start-up hub globally.
Entrepreneurs today are utilising the unprecedented advances from technology, operating on the demands of our demography, and inadvertently steering citizen welfare.
Five years since Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Start-Up India initiative, we are witnessing a golden chapter in the history of Indian entrepreneurship.
India now has 38,756 officially-recognised start-ups –– with 27 unicorns, eight of which achieved this status in 2020 –– and is the third-largest tech start-up hub globally.
According to Praxis Global Alliance, start-ups are growing at an average rate of 12–15% annually. Start-ups have raised $63 billion between 2016–20 in funding, $20 billion of which was raised in 2019 over 1,854 deals. Investments in start-ups are growing incrementally each year ($12 billion, $25.2 billion, $26.3 billion, and $34 billion invested in the last four years, respectively), with $16.7 billion till May 2020. Start-Up India kickstarted an entrepreneurship revolution. Several policy interventions were since announced, giving the entrepreneurial ecosystem a much-needed launchpad. The overhaul of the digital payments ecosystem is being led by State innovation, with Aadhaar, Jan Dhan, UPI, and India Stack. The Atal Innovation Mission, Niti Aayog, has built an ecosystem of 8,800 tinkering labs, 4,000 mentors and over two-and-a-half million students, and acted as a conduit for over 3,500 innovations while supporting 1,500 start-ups.
Xpeng’s autopilot system Xpilot 3.0 is expected to be included in its P7 smart sedan in early 2021. Photo: HandoutXpeng’s autopilot system Xpilot 3.0 is expected to be included in its P7 smart sedan in early 2021.
It is difficult for self-driving systems to replace human drivers, especially in densely populated cities, Xpeng’s head of autonomous driving says
Self-driving long-haul trucks and robots handling last-mile deliveries are more likely to be successfully automated, according to Xinzhou Wu
The past six months have seen a fairly aggressive acceleration in the option of robotics and automation as companies look for ways to augment (and, likely, replace in some instances) human workers. The appeal is certainly clear during massive pandemic-fueled shutdowns.
Sam’s Club has been into robotic floor cleaning for a bit longer, having already deployed Tennant’s T7AMR scrubbers in a number of locations. But this week the Walmart -owned bulk retailer announced that it’s adding another 372 this year, bringing the technology to all of its 599 U.S. stores.
In a May 2011 special research report, Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity, the management consulting firm McKinsey put forth the case that “Big data will become a key basis of competition, underpinning new waves of productivity growth, innovation, and consumer surplus.” The McKinsey report went on to note that, “The amount of data in our world has been exploding. Leaders in every sector will have to grapple with the implications of big data, not just a few data-oriented managers. The increasing volume and detail of information captured by enterprises, the rise of multimedia, social media, and the Internet of Things will fuel exponential growth in data for the foreseeable future.”
General usage of the term “Big Data” can be traced to the McKinsey report and similar reports from IBM that ensued around this time. The McKinsey report was prescient in its observations that “Leaders in every sector will have to grapple with the implications of big data, not just a few data-oriented managers.” In retrospect, this was the key insight. From this point forward, interest in data would no longer be limited to the purview of “a few data-oriented managers,” but rather would become the purview of “leaders in every sector.” The McKinsey report went on to describe the advent of the era of Big Data as heralding “new waves of productivity growth, innovation, and consumer surplus.” The report contained one important caveat however, noting that these advances were all predicated “as long as the right policies and enablers are in place.”
Top strategic technology trends for the enterprise
Operational resiliency is key as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to change how companies will do business next year.
There are nine top strategic technology trends that businesses should plan for in 2021 as the pandemic continues, according to Gartner’s analysts. Their findings were presented on Monday at the virtual Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo Americas conference, which runs through Thursday.
Organizational plasticity is key to these trends. “When we talk about the strategic technology trends, we actually have them grouped into three different themes, which is people centricity, location independence, and resilient delivery,” said Brian Burke, research vice president at Gartner. “What we’re talking about with the trends is how do you leverage technology to gain the organizational plasticity that you need to form and reform into whatever’s going to be required as we emerge from this pandemic?”
Jason Ramshaw, Commercial Manager for Caterpillar Construction Digital & Technology, demonstrates the Cat Command remote control console to operate a 320 excavator at Caterpillar’s Construction Industries
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Question: How can a company like Caterpillar CAT.N try to counter a slump in sales of bulldozers and trucks during a pandemic that has made every human a potential disease vector?
Answer: Cut out human operators, perhaps?
Caterpillar’s autonomous driving technology, which can be bolted on to existing machines, is helping the U.S. heavy equipment maker mitigate the heavy impact of the coronavirus crisis on sales of its traditional workhorses.
With both small and large customers looking to protect their operations from future disruptions, demand has surged for machines that don’t require human operators on board.
Several centuries ago Europe and the USA underwent the industrial revolution, a transformation of our manufacturing processes enabled by the development of new machinery to support repetitive assembly line tasks within large factories.
The revolution served to bind workforces to specific locations and rigid working hours, triggering a fundamental societal shift as countries saw mass population migration from rural areas to the cities. Post-revolution life would never be the same again.
The question is, with millions of people currently working from home and showing little appetite to return to the office, are we witnessing a new industrial revolution across the knowledge economy?
With many ships poised to return, operators are making hundreds of changes to improve the safety of sailing.
Big-name cruise companies have been on pause since mid-March, after they voluntarily ceased operations a day before the CDC issued a “No Sail Order” for any ships carrying more than 250 passengers. In the months since, smaller ocean and river lines have developed new pandemic-era health and safety guidelines aimed at restoring traveler confidence in cruising.
And travelers are interested, says Rob Clabbers, president of Q Cruise & Travel in Chicago and a member of T+L’s Travel Advisory Board. “We have some clients who literally can’t wait to get back on a ship,” he explains. When they do eventually board, vacationers will find a new routine — at least in the near term.
