Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 03/06 - Google Ads AI to Drones?

Episode Date: March 6, 2018

Google adds AI to drones, Uber trucks start hauling cargo, reading the Uber tea leaves, Washington State brings back net neutrality, Bumble bans guns, and Dyson cuts the cord. Literally. Google says it provides TensorFlow APIs to US Dept of Defense to help interpret drone footage, is working on policies and safeguards for use of machine learning Gizmodo Uber begins using its self-driving trucks for some long haul cargo trips in Arizona as part of Uber Freight service, leaving the last stretch to human drivers The VergeNew York TimesYouTube Source: Uber has burned $10.7B total so far, making its losses worse than tech giants when they had same market cap; revenue lags firms with similar market capBloomberg Washington becomes first state to enact its own net neutrality protections as its bill is signed into law; 25+ states have introduced net neutrality billsGeekwireMashable Bumble updates policy to ban firearm images and will use ~5K moderators to remove gun-related content, won't censor images appearing in users' Instagram feedsNew York TimesTechCrunch@jrsalzman Dyson says it's done making corded vacuumsCNET Credits: Produced by @brianmcc and the @techmeme staff Music by @jpschwinghamer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech Meme Ride Home for Tuesday, March 6th, 2018. Today, Google adds AI to drones. Uber trucks start hauling cargo.

Reading the Uber T leaves. Washington State brings back net neutrality. Bumble bans guns and Dyson cuts the cord, literally. Here's what happened today in tech. Google is apparently helping the Pentagon build AI for drones. Gizmodo is reporting that Google is reporting that Google is. is a partner with the Department of Defense on its so-called Project Maven, which is an effort to identify and classify objects in the live feeds of drone footage. Google is apparently

providing its TensorFlow APIs, which are used in machine learning applications, to help the Pentagon detect objects in videos. The obvious utility of such a technique would be to better identify targets on the battlefield. Google's involvement in this project had not been previously known, but it was discussed widely at Google last week when information on the project was posted to an internal mailing list. According to Gizmodo, knowledge of the program provoked a, quote, firestorm of reaction, with some employees questioning the ethics of using machine learning techniques in this sort of application, and others simply outraged that Google would be a partner in military drone surveillance activity at all. Google maintains that its involvement in

Project Maven is not for combat purposes, and an unnamed spokesman told Gizmodo that Google is working to, quote, develop policies and safeguards around the development and use of our machine learning technologies. Project Maven is a crash course project that the Pentagon established in April of last year. The stated goal of the program is to, quote, accelerate DOD's integration of big data and machine learning. The government has been ramping up the program, rapidly because of the sheer volume of video footage collected daily by military drones, which meant that human analysts were unable to keep up. Interestingly, Project Maven is related to the Defense Information Unit Experimental,

which is the Department of Defense's Tech Incubation Program, as well as the Defense Innovation Board, which is an advisory group designed to bridge the knowledge gap between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley. The Defense Innovation Board is chaired by former Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt. The reactions on Twitter were, as you might expect. Bloomberg's Shira Oviday tweeted, Google as government AI contractor, oh boy. And Rolling Stones, Matt Taibi, tweeted,

Maybe I won't buy that Google Assistant after all. But clearly, guys, the go-to snark here would be to make some sort of joke referencing Don't Be Evil, right? Several outlets reported this morning that Uber's fleet of self-driving trucks are operating on Arizona highways as a part of the Uber freight service. Shippers are now able to use Uber's Uber Freight app to book a trucker, and the AI will be piloting the big rigs on the highway. But this is not full automation yet. Uber says that it's using what it calls a transfer hub system. So if you had some freight to ship, you'd dial. up the request on the app. A trucker would show up with a normal semi to your location,

load up the cargo, and then that trucker would drive it to a transfer hub on the outskirts of town where he would be met by one of Uber's self-driving trucks. The trailer would then be transferred, and it's only on the highways that the driving will be autonomous, and even then, a safety driver will be on board. At the destination, the process is reversed, when the Uber arrives at another hub. The freight is transferred to a traditional truck for a human to pilot on the urban streets to make the final delivery. The trucks are currently operating between two hubs on either side of the state, one in Topok, Arizona, and one in Sanders, Arizona. Uber's self-driving trucks made their first commercial delivery last year. 2,000 cases of Budweiser over a 120-mile

haul, if you're interested. And on YouTube, Uber posted a video touting but it hopes will be an autonomous trucking future. Alden Woodrow, the product manager for Uber's self-driving truck unit, told the New York Times, quote, we think self-driving technology has tremendous potential to solve some of the big problems that the trucking industry has today. The company is being tight-lipped on the specifics, specifics like how many trucks are operating,

how many trips they've made, what they've shipped, or how often the human overseers have had to intercede on the highway. And as the Verge noted, by taking this intermediate step, Uber can not only work out the kinks in real time, but can, for the time being, claim that no jobs are being automated away. In fact, Uber argues that, at least in the short term, this system will actually add jobs, not the least of which being those three different drivers that would be involved in the current arrangement. Uber first got into trucking with its 2016 acquisition of auto. But then that got all mixed up in the Waymo alphabet intellectual property lawsuit, which was settled last month.

Waymo, of course, is also working on driverless trucking technology, as is Tesla. And there are a slew of other autonomous truck players, including Embark, which just completed a coast-to-coast trip from L.A. to Jacksonville, Florida. One other bit of Uber discussions since we're on the topic. Bloomberg posted an interesting piece reading the tea leaves of U.S. Uber's financials this morning. We, of course, know that Uber isn't profitable, but what people can't seem to get enough of is trying to figure out how unprofitable and in what ways. The new yardstick that Bloomberg used to get a handle on Uber's business was to compare

it to other companies when they were at a similar valuation. So Uber is currently valued at $54 billion and had $7.4 billion in $7.4 billion in the revenue but also had 4.5 billion in losses. When Google was valued at $54 billion, it had only $3.2 billion in revenue, but it did have about $400 million in profit. When Facebook was worth $54 billion, it had $5.1 billion in revenue and only a scant $32 million in profit, but that was still profit. When Amazon was Uber's size, it had $24 billion in revenue and $900 million in profit. So the conclusion drawn from this comparison is that Uber is an outlier for continuing to lose so much money at this stage of its business life.

However, as the piece also points out, Uber's growth rate remains strong, especially maybe at this stage of its life. The fourth quarter of 2017 saw Uber's revenue growth surge 90% percent. compared to 2016. Bloomberg notes that Uber delivered triple the revenue growth of the average North American tech company valued at around Uber's valuation of between $40 and $60 billion. Uber's only comment in the piece was that, quote, our growth at scale remains incredibly strong, and we are driving meaningful improvements to our margins.

Why exactly does everyone like to play this particular parlor game? Reggie Vates on Twitter said, quote, because Uber doesn't disclose financial results with much consistency, it's easy to lose sight of how much of investors money Uber has spent. In the piece, Bloomberg noted that since its founding nine years ago, Uber has burned through about $10.7 billion of VC money that it is raised. Investors have reportedly contributed $17.3 billion to Uber over its lifetime, according to a, quote, person familiar with the matter who declined to be named.

Wall Street Journal reporter Elliot Brown tweeted, Uber Bulls love to say the company is investing like Amazon did. And look at Amazon today. But as this Bloomberg piece notes, when Amazon was valued at $54 billion, it had $900 million in profit. Uber lost $4.5 billion. On Monday, Washington State became the first in the union

to enact its own net neutrality. protections. Governor Jay Inslee signed House Bill 2282 that would, according to the governor's office, quote, prohibit companies that offer internet services from blocking legal content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices. It will prohibit them from impairing or throttling internet traffic based on the content internet users consume or the apps, services, and devices they use. Washington State passed the bill despite a clause in the the FCC's recently passed net neutrality repeal that was designed to prevent states from doing exactly this sort of end run around the repeal. But Governor Inslee told Geekwire, quote,

We think we're on very firm ground. The state of Washington retains its right to have consumer protection laws. This is, at its heart, a consumer protection law, and we are providing a mechanism to protect consumers from illicit behavior in the marketplace. More than 25 other states, and the District of Columbia are considering passing similar laws to bring back net neutrality protections in their jurisdictions. No doubt, all of this will end up in courts before too long. And speaking of courts, in a related story, several tech companies, including Etsy, Kickstarter, Automatic, Foursquare, and Shutterstock,

filed a petition on Monday with the Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit against the FCC's original decision to end net neutrality. The companies are filing under a new consortium called the Coalition for Internet Openness. The fight for net neutrality is the fight for civil liberties and a more vibrant culture. Without it, the free and equal exchange of ideas is at risk. Candice Martin, commercial counsel for Kickstarter told Mashable. In another example of brands being forced to, navigate the tricky politics surrounding the gun control debate, the dating app Bumble announced that it is banning profile pictures featuring users handling guns, knives, or other deadly weapons.

Bumble's 5,000 contracted content moderators will scour user photos and remove those deemed to be in violation of the new policy. Bumble did say it would carve out exceptions for military or law enforcement officers who post photos with guns in them while in uniform. There would also be an appeal process. And Bumble would not attempt to censor users' Instagram feeds, which can be integrated into Bumble profiles. Bumble founder Whitney Wolf Hurd told TechCrunch that this move shouldn't be seen as Bumble taking a stance on the larger issue of gun ownership, either pro or con. Rather, it's the company, quote, taking a hard stance against normalizing violence on their platform. Miss Hurd told the New York Times, quote, we just want to create a community where people feel at ease, where they do not feel threatened, and we just don't see guns fitting into that

equation. With nearly 30 million users, Bumble has long been seen as a dating app that bends over backwards to make non-male users feel comfortable. And it has previous history aggressively policing its content over issues like hate speech and overly sexually suggestive pictures. But clearly, in the current political climate, any such move will cause controversy. Indeed, on Twitter, user J.R. Saltzman, who describes himself as a Christian and an Iraq war vet, tweeted what might be a representative argument of those who would object to Bumble's moves, saying, quote, Bumble comes out as being a far-left platform.

If you're a soldier in uniform, you can have a photo with a gun, but if you're a hunter or a shooting enthusiast, they consider you a potential mass murderer and will close your account despite breaking no laws, end quote. Bumble CEO heard told the New York Times, quote, This is not super black and white. It's a very tricky battle we've chosen to take on, but I'd rather pursue this than just ignore it. Finally today, CNET is reporting that Dyson, the vacuum company, is cutting the cord. At a press conference here in New York, company founder James Dyson, said the company is moving to only release cordless models of its signature vacuum cleaners going forward.

Dyson specifically referenced the recent Cyclone V-10 StickVAC saying, quote, this is why I've stopped developing corded vacuums. The Cyclone v10 is apparently a mostly all-electric motor, which gives the wireless vacuum a lot of power, in spite of its small size and lightweight. Dyson will apparently not stop selling its existing upright corded models right away, but the Verges Dan Seafurt was bummed nonetheless, tweeting that this news kind of sucks because, quote,

replacing a vacuum every five years because its batteries wear out is not fun. That's all for today. Thanks for listening to our first official episode. I've been your host, Brian McCullough. You can follow me on Twitter at Brian MCC. The music was composed by Justin Swinghammer. The show was produced by myself and the entire staff of editors at TechMean.com. And thank you for listening.

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