METAVERSE

Your Digital Twin

Above are three versions of me. One is an actual photo and two are screenshots of animated avatars created using Itsme and Genies, two digital avatar companies. 

Platforms like Itsme and Genies have raised millions of dollars to be at the cutting edge of the digital avatar industry, which experts say is a building block toward more lifelike digital communication—and possibly better communication, period. 

We talked to the founders of Itsme and Genies, and two digital media experts, to learn more. Click here to read the full piece, or keep scrolling for a summary. 

Compare and contrast

Of the two companies, Genies is the industry leader. It started in 2017—three years before Itsme—and has raised $117 million in funding compared to Itsme’s $15.2 million. 

And while both platforms let people make hi-fi digital characters, they have very different models: Genies makes avatars to use on other apps like Giphy, while Itsme is itself a social network. Itsme, which is backed by Seven Seven Six, Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian’s VC firm, says it has 4 million registered users worldwide who spend a total of 2.5 million minutes video chatting with their avatars per week. 

• Genies used to be for celebrities like Justin Bieber and J Balvin, but they recently opened up their beta version to anyone on the Apple App Store and Google Play. 

The appeal

Both Itsme CEO and cofounder Aakash Sastry and Genies founder and CEO Akash Nigam say the goal is to help people form better connections by giving them more control over how they present themselves. 

• “We wanted a creative way for people to meet online without having to feel anxious about their looks,” Sastry told us. “Your avatar allows you to be much more expressive than physically possible and much more true than physically possible.

Grace Ahn, a communications professor at the University of Georgia, told us that this sort of control can result in better interactions.  

But, but, but: Producing characters that are too realistic could be a turnoff, according to Robby Ratan, a professor at Michigan State University. Ratan also warned that Big Tech could eventually scoop up smaller digital avatar companies and integrate them into their forthcoming AR/VR platforms. 

Big picture: “This tech appeals to a base human instinct: controlling and self-monitoring how people look at you,” Ratan said. “In the same way that we as a species have evolved to pay attention to fashion, we will glom onto the malleability of avatars—it’s the digital clothing.” 

Click here to read the full version. —DT

SEMICONDUCTORS

2 Small

Last week, IBM Research announced a major breakthrough for the chip world (and, by association, the whole world). After four years of work, the company unveiled the first chip in history with 2-nanometer tech. 

The technology can make chips either 45% faster or 75% more energy-efficient than today’s leading options, according to IBM Research. (It’s a trade-off.) 

• To put that in perspective: Dario Gil, IBM's SVP and director of IBM Research, told us it’s like using a state-of-the-art iPhone for four days straight on a single charge. 
• Manufacturing is projected to begin in late 2024 or, even more likely, 2025. 

“The nature of this advancement is not about making a chip, but rather the technology that is going to make all chips,” says Gil. 

Explain it like I’m five

There are zeros and ones “behind the scenes of everything we do,” says Gil. You can convert any language—English, for example, or math—into a string of zeros and ones. So you have to translate, or “map the problem you want to solve,” into those zeros and ones, says Gil. 

Next, you need a way to process those zeros and ones so you can work quickly and translate your task. Building a microscopic physical device called a transistor allows you to do that. 

• How it works: You apply voltage and electric field to the transistor’s “gate,” which acts according to its name: either allowing electric current through or stopping it short. That’s why it’s thought of as a switch, says Gil: “When current is flowing, we can call it a one, and when current is not flowing, we call it a zero.” 

Bottom line: The more transistors you pack onto a chip, the more zeros and ones you can process—and the more calculations you can do. 

Small device, big deal 

The two-nanometer node will allow engineers to build 50 billion transistors into a chip the size of a fingernail. Each transistor is thinner than a single strand of human DNA. 

“It’s this marvel of engineering and science,” says Gil. “Billions of transistors...all interconnected, processing your zeros and ones behind the scenes—and doing math for you, doing language translation for you, and so on. So that’s the beauty of it: It’s the heart of the digital era.” 

Some real-life use cases: Major advances in graphics rendering, video quality and loading speeds, and payment processing. We’ll also likely see AI-driven scientific advancements—molecule simulation, drug discovery, battery tech—as well as accelerated language processing. 

Zoom out: AI is “extremely power-hungry,” says Gil, who has no doubt that we’ll see even larger language models roll out as a result of the technology. On the user side, he says, that can mean better translation, voice recognition, and automated customer service. But as we’ve heard lately from academics and ethicists, bigger is not always better. —HF 

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AUTOMATION

Robot Rundown

The steady drumbeat of automation plays on in North America. Companies on the continent ordered 20% more robots in Q1 2021 compared to Q1 2020, according to the industry trade group Association for Advancing Automation. North American companies purchased 9,098 units valued at $466 million in Q1.

What’s new? Robot orders saw particularly high growth outside of the car-making world—Q1 was the second-best quarter ever for non-auto robot sales, and Q4 2020 was the best-ever. Overall, 2020 was the first year ever in which non-automotive orders > automotive orders.

• Non-auto robot embracers include companies in: metals, life sciences, food, and consumer goods.
• Reuters reports that Tyson Foods is one non-auto company that wants more robots, but some of its tasks (e.g., deboning a chicken) are still out of reach for machines. Right now, Tyson’s robots mostly wrap and stack boxes on pallets. 

Zoom out: As of 2019, the US and Canada were the only two North American nations to rate among the top 20 countries in terms of manufacturing robot density. The US was ninth with 228 manufacturing robots per 10,000 workers, while Canada was eighteenth with 161. 

Dan McCarthy

Big picture: More robots ≠ fewer jobs. Sometimes that’s the case, but robots can also bridge labor shortages, and other times they can actually preserve or create work. —DM 

BITS & BYTES

Stat: Early this morning, ether hit another record high of about $4,142 after a ~7% spike. (Remember when we wrote about it hitting 3.2K?)

Quote: “Elon’s tweet does not match engineering reality...Tesla is at level 2 currently.”—A California DMV report citing comments from CJ Moore, Tesla’s head of Autopilot

Read: The US wants to get better at manufacturing chips, but that’s no easy task.

Hodl: Barron’s explains how to dip your toes in the crypto pond without getting soaked. Crypto can be intimidating, but it also can’t be dismissed—here’s everything you need to know about the perils and possibilities.*

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WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Clubhouse has launched an Android app in beta. 
• Sony is warning that the PlayStation 5 will be in short supply through 2022, Bloomberg reports. 
• Colonial Pipeline, which carries ~45% of gas consumed on the East Coast, halted operations due to a cyberattack.
• Amazon—just days after Apple’s AirTag announcement—said that Tile trackers will work with Amazon’s Sidewalk Bluetooth network starting in June.

THREE THINGS WE’RE WATCHING

Tuesday: IBM Think begins. The company’s annual conference on the future of hybrid cloud and AI will feature speakers like Malcolm Gladwelll; the Center for Humane Technology’s Tristan Harris; and comedian, writer, and cultural critic Baratunde Thurston. 

Thursday: Earnings: Alibaba, Airbnb, and DoorDash. 

Friday: Foxconn earnings. In October 2020, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer (and major Apple supplier) announced its goal to become the “Android of EVs” and create a solid-state battery for electric vehicles by 2024. TBD on how those goals are progressing. 

TECH THROWBACK

On May 11, 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer beat Garry Kasparov, the world’s best chess player. We’ve since seen IBM’s Watson beat Ken Jennings at Jeopardy! and DeepMind’s AlphaGo defeat Go champion Fan Hui. 

ICYMI

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions: 

• What will new US fabs change—and what won't they change?
• Cybersecurity AI firm Darktrace goes public at $2.4 billion valuation
• Ether, the world’s second-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, hits new high