This Past Week in Deep Tech (10/2)
Central Banks running on Blockchain, Vans playing with Drones, the most desirable Future Work skills, and the clash between Genomics innovation and regulation.
Cryptocurrency
If you can’t beat em, join em. In an irony of ironies, central banks are now exploring launching their own digital form of currency built on blockchain technology, the underlying technology that supports Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. This being ironic because cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin were created to reduce dependency on the traditional financial system (central banks, middle-men, other 3rd parties).
The reasons vary, depending on the country. Sweden’s central bank, Riksbank, is exploring it because its citizens are already high mobile-payment adopters. The bank estimates that “…cash transactions made up only 15 percent of all retail transactions last year, down from 40 percent in 2010, thanks in large part to massively popular mobile payment services.”
Conversely, Japan’s central bank recently announced that they’re exploring launching its own cryptocurrency, the J-Coin, to encourage adoption of cash-less mobile payments — roughly 70% of transactions in Japan are cash-based. This high cash-dependency results in excessively high costs for the banks and governments due to the cost of handling & transporting the cash and auditing the resulting transactions.
With the upcoming 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Japan is in rush to get something secure and operational running as the influx of visitors is set to put a strain on its financial system. Exchanged at a one-to-one rate with Yen, the adoption of this new digital currency could add $90 Billion to Japan’s economy according to the Financial Times. With the J-Coin, Japan hopes to join in on the growing trend of cashlessness (see Denmark, Britain, Korea, and even leading banks).
Genomics
As technology that analyzes our genomes gets smarter, direct-to-consumer genetic tests such as those offered by 23andMe are growing in popularity. However, several states are resisting in the name of protecting consumers from dubious claims made by diagnostic tests.
An example of this clash between innovation and regulation occurred on September 17th, when Boston-based biotech startup Orig3n planned to give away free DNA tests to the 55,000 football fans at a Baltimore Ravens game. The state of Maryland quickly raised questions over how Orig3n promoted its product and forced the company to postpone the giveaway.
While the reasons for this postponement revolved around the marketing of consumer DNA tests, there are other, potentially more dangerous, reasons to be concerned about new genome-analyzing technology.
For example, researchers at Human Longevity are now able to produce images of people’s faces from their genomes. While this has potentially great implications in forensic science, in the wrong hands this technology brings to life a privacy nightmare for healthcare institutions and public genome sequencing efforts. Dr. Venter, one of the founders behind Human Longevity, argues that “…genomic information must now be treated as personal information” because soon it will “…be possible to construct a face from the limited genetic data that people currently post online, for example, from DNA-testing services such as 23andMe.”
If this data can be hacked and tied to your personal identity, it could potentially harm social-good efforts that use donated genome information to find cures for genetic diseases.
Soon, states like Maryland will have more to consider beyond the marketing of DNA-testing products.
Future of Work
As Robots and AI begin to replace humans — at least in performing manual & routine-intensive tasks — the top desirable future work skills will revolve around creative thinking, judgment & decision-making, and new learning strategies.
A new report by the British innovation foundation Nesta and the University of Oxford goes deep into this topic, outlining how employment is likely to change by 2030.
The growing need for employees with judgment and decision-making skills can be tied to advancements in machine intelligence. Examining these advancements with the simple economic lens used in this HBR article by Ajay Agrawal and Joshua Gans, as the cost of a foundational input (machine intelligence) drops, the value of substitutes (human prediction) drops while the value complements (human judgment) rises.
For example, The Weather Company, owned by IBM, currently uses machine learning to make 2.2B forecasts every 15 minutes. “When comparing the outputs of the machine learning models against the traditional models, machine learning fares 10–20% better when predicting the track of weather and up to 30% better predicting the intensity of hurricanes.”
James Belanger, a senior meteorological scientist at The Weather Company, envisions “…a day where maybe forecasters are working less on the track of the storm and more on the impacts, and communicating those impacts to the public more than they are right now”
See Also: How to Win in the Future of Work
Vans ‘n Drones
Mercedes-Benz Vans, US drone systems developer Matternet and Swiss online marketplace siroop have started a pilot project in Zurich to test an efficient van and drone-based system for on-demand delivery of e-commerce goods.
This is significant for autonomous aerial systems, as it is the first time such operations are taking place in a major urban area with the use of vans as landing platforms to test a fully-automated e-commerce drone network.
During the course of the three-week pilot project, customers will be able to order selected products from online marketplace siroop that are suitable for transport by a Matternet drone, such as consumer electronics and other e-commerce items weighing up to two kilograms.
