ROBOTICS

Taking Spot for a spin, 1,700 miles away

Before you could buy one, Boston Dynamics’s quadruped robo-doges spent years performing cinematographic waltzes and hauling heavy things around. Then, in June 2020, Spot finally went on sale with a starting price tag of $74,500. 

We’ve wanted to try Spot out but didn’t have $75k in the R&D budget. So we phoned a friend: Formant. The San Francisco-based startup sells robot command centers as a service. “Kind of like Tony Stark view for robots,” Formant CEO Jeff Linnell told us, that lets customers remotely operate and monitor their fleet, run analytics on a massive firehose of data, and audit errors as or after they occur. 

We put Formant’s tool to the test from Texas. For 30 minutes, Ryan remotely operated a Spot in the Bay Area using an Xbox controller, MacBook Pro, and Formant dashboard within his Google Chrome browser. Read the review here, and keep scrolling for more on Spot. 

Who are Spot’s biggest buyers? 

From drones to robotic grape-pickers to underwater, uncrewed vessels to hospital droids, Formant has tons of visibility into deployments of all manner of robots. As for Spot, Linnell highlighted heavy-duty industries (e.g., oil companies) as power users. 

Last June, when Boston Dynamics made Spot commercially available, VP of Business Development Michael Perry anticipated these power users in an interview with us. A spokesperson told us there are now roughly 500 Spots out in the wild. 

• Of the four customer examples they provided, all were in the energy/utility/oil/gas space. BP, for example, is using Spot on an offshore oil rig. 

Spot has not evaded controversy in its young life as a commercial product. The New York City Police Department owned one, nicknamed Digidog. When officers recently deployed Digidog to a hostage situation in the Bronx and public housing in Manhattan, the anti-surveillance backlash was (predictably) swift and severe. Shortly thereafter, the NYPD fired Spot.

Big picture

Spot graduated from the R&D department of Boston Dynamics to (primarily) the same place in Fortune 500 companies, universities, and governments. Like Formant, most customers use Spot for research purposes, Linnell says. The modular robot can fit sensors and other payloads on its back. 

But also... nothing commands the internet’s attention quite like a Boston Dynamics robot. Beyond being a capable mobility platform or robotic test tool, Spot is a powerful marketing vehicle. Formant recently gave ~5,000 global netizens the chance to try Spot in the Test #1 format. 

Click here to read the full piece. —RD

AI

Unintended consequences

On today’s episode of AI Gone Wrong: An Airbnb algorithm with the power to help decrease racial disparities in earnings ended up doing the very opposite. 

That’s according to a recent Carnegie Mellon study of 9,000+ Airbnb hosts using third-party data, focusing on the platform’s “Smart Pricing” algorithm. The opt-in feature, introduced in 2015, analyzes current demand to adjust nightly rates (while still allowing hosts to set a minimum price), making it easier for hosts to get bookings. 

What went right: When hosts did turn on the feature, the algorithm decreased racial disparities in earnings by 71%. These disparities existed because of “lower demand for Black-owned homes,” reports the FT.

What went wrong: Since Black hosts were 41% less likely to adopt the feature, the algorithm ended up widening the overall earnings gap and making things even worse. It's unclear what caused the adoption gap. 

• “So even a well-meaning algorithm can lead to greater social inequality,” Param Vir Singh, the paper’s author, told the FT. “There are unintended consequences of algorithms.” 

An Airbnb spokesperson told us the number of active US listings using the algorithm “has increased more than 50% over the last three years as we have worked to educate hosts on the benefits of this tool.” The spokesperson added that Airbnb plans to “examine the usage of our Smart Pricing tool by perceived racial groups.” 

Looking ahead: People are calling for increased transparency on Airbnb’s part—including for the company to make internal data available to independent auditors. Airbnb declined to tell us whether it will do so. —HF 

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Even if You’re Small, Ransomware Is a Big Problem

It might seem like small businesses would be less vulnerable to ransomware attacks than larger ones, but the reality is that even a small biz is extremely valuable to adversaries. Money, intellectual property, and customer data are always sought after by digital thieves—no matter the size of your organization.

So that’s the bad news. But reader, we’re all about good news, which is why we’re going to tell you about CrowdStrike®. They’re a leading cybersecurity company that handles over 2 trillion security events on a weekly basis.

TL;DR: They know what they’re doing.

CrowdStrike has summarized the realities of ransomware for small businesses like yours in this e-book. Inside, you’ll find all you need to know about how your IT team can protect against ransomware and get back to business fast if you do get compromised.

Don’t sleep on cybersecurity cause you think you’re too small-time. Read CrowdStrike’s e-book, “Ransomware Realities,” here. 

CONTACT TRACING

Tracing the impact

A forthcoming article in Nature, one of the world’s most well-respected science journals, found that app-based contact tracing played a significant role in reining in the UK’s pandemic. 

Last March, the tech was heralded as a critical tool for containing the virus’s spread—this study lends some fresh support to those claims. 

The stats: Over the final ~3 months of 2020, the app helped prevent an estimated 284,000–594,000 Covid-19 cases, and between 4,200 and 8,700 deaths. (The big ranges stem from the researchers using two different methodologies.)

• The app was regularly used by 16.5 million people, or about 28% of the UK's population. Last spring, many public health agencies thought they’d need > 60% adoption to see benefits, though that threshold was based on a widespread misunderstanding of an Oxford report.  
• Authors of the Nature study estimate that every additional percentage point of adoption resulted in a 0.8%–2.3% reduction in cases. 

Zoom in: The US has struggled to drive adoption of contact tracing apps, largely because of privacy concerns and distrust of tech companies like Google and Apple, which developed the underlying tech. —DM 

BITS & BYTES

Stat: 64% of chief information security officers feel their organization is at risk of a “material cyberattack” in the next 12 months, according to a Proofpoint survey of 1,400 CISOs from 14 different countries.

Quote: “I think the shock is the pace at which we execute—it's at least as blistering as anything I've ever experienced at Google.”—Rick Klau, California’s chief technology innovation officer, to Protocol 

Read: A look at Bill Gates’s “reputation for questionable behavior,” well before he and Melinda called it quits.

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WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Amazon-affiliated semitrucks were involved in 50+ serious crashes in three years, per an investigation by The Information.
• TSMC may build a 3-nanometer foundry in Arizona. If you don’t know what that means, read this.
• Twitter may be introducing a subscription service, Twitter Blue, at $2.99/mo. 
• Roblox and Gucci teamed up to bring luxury items to the metaverse. 
• Dogecoin is coming to Coinbase in two months or less. 

THREE THINGS WE'RE WATCHING

Tuesday: Google I/O officially begins and runs through Thursday. Execs will likely announce flashy updates to some of the company’s top services; in the past, I/O announcements have included Incognito Mode for Google Maps, new voices for Assistant, and more. 

Thursday: Tencent releases earnings. The Chinese tech conglomerate is not only the owner of WeChat, but also the world’s biggest video game company. Oh, and it has a substantial stake in Epic Games. This earnings report falls squarely during the third (and likely final) week of the Epic-Apple trial. 

Friday: Clubhouse finally launches on Android. Expect an influx of green texts asking you for invites. 

THE TECHLARATION

We recently discovered mmm.page, which was just named #2 Product of the Week on Product Hunt. The drag-and-drop website builder is silly, serendipitous, and most importantly, super easy to use. If you’ve ever wanted to try building a personal website, look no further. Here’s a page Ryan made for his drone in 10 minutes on Thursday. 

ICYMI

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

• AI ethics experts react to Google doubling embattled ethics team 
• Apple and Amazon compete over new wireless networks
• The rise of “high-fidelity” digital avatars