Humans have long used technology to help us understand the ocean. In the Middle Ages, we used mariner’s astrolabes to help us determine a ship’s location at sea. In the 1900s, we used early-stage sonar systems to get an idea of the ocean floor.

And today...Robots are helping with everything from monitoring endangered species to mapping the seafloor.

Startups specializing in autonomous ocean robots have slowly been gaining traction—and funding. We took a look at three ocean robotics projects here, but keep reading for one example.

For mammal minding

Julie Angus, a Canadian adventurer-turned-robotics-entrepreneur, founded Open Ocean Robotics in 2018 as a way to bring together autonomous boats, solar energy, and long-term ocean monitoring.

The startup’s unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) are designed to be deployed for months at a time, primarily for monitoring marine mammals and other species.

• In the past, it has worked on illegal fishing enforcement and seafloor mapping, but now, Open Ocean typically focuses on observing endangered whale populations on the Canadian coastline.
• Open Ocean started using its first late-stage prototype boat in 2020, but the startup has since moved on to five commercial boats. Later this year, it plans add 10 more boats to its fleet.

There’s not only an academic call for this type of monitoring, but also a commercial one: Many governments have specific requirements for protecting marine life in cases of ocean development, transportation, and even naval operations. Open Ocean has raised a total of $3.6 million to date, with its latest funding round in December.

• The startup’s boats are loaded with sensors, thermal and visual cameras, and machine-learning algorithms that use those inputs to detect nearby vessels and marine mammals.

Big picture: Even if the boats are autonomously collecting data on a pre-programmed route, there’s always a human in the loop—someone observing their operations from Open Ocean’s control room in Victoria, British Columbia.

Read about the two other ocean robotics projects we profiled here.—HF

In the last few weeks, it seems like the nascent carbon-removal market has gotten just about every boost it could possibly get.

Zoom in: For the second installment of our Twitter Spaces series on climate tech, we chatted with Michelle You, co-founder and CEO of Supercritical, a UK-based software startup that is taking a unique approach to helping scale carbon-removal tech.

• Supercritical, which is less than a year old and as of last summer had raised $2.7 million in pre-seed cash, aims to help carbon removal scale by first automating carbon accounting for clients, and then making it easy for them to purchase high-quality carbon-removal credits.
• The company focuses specifically on the tech industry, which emits more CO2 than the aviation sector.

Demand side: You said that, in her experience, demand for carbon removal services has begun to outstrip supply. We heard a similar sentiment from carbon-removal execs last month, who told us that demand from private companies was accelerating. Put that together with the advanced market commitments from the $925 million Stripe-led Frontier Fund, and it’s clear that the number of potential buyers is growing quickly.

So, what about supply? You said one challenge to meeting demand at the moment is that at-scale carbon-removal tech requires a ton of money and time to build out.

• Permits are also a constraint for solutions like DAC, which aims to store carbon underground. For example, there’s currently only one operational sequestration site in the US, per the EPA.

“There’s a capex problem of building a carbon-removal facility—that takes years, that takes a lot of money—but the demand for carbon removal can move as quickly as the speed of thought,” You said. “Once it becomes something that everyone agrees on and thinks is the way to go, then that demand can just explode overnight without the capital or real-world facilities built to keep up with it.”

Click here to read the full recap.—DM

The increasing use of AI-enabled hiring tools often finds job applicants hyping their credentials in front of a reflection of themselves. Also known as “automated,” or “asynchronous” video interviews, one-way interviews have been marketed by some vendors as a way to cut through a deluge of applications with algorithms.

Some claim this is a common practice used by Fortune 500 companies. According to unpublished data shared with HR Brew, globally, “61% of recruiting and HR technology leaders say their organization is currently using [one-way video] technology,” Jamie Kohn, a research director in Gartner’s HR practice, wrote via email.

Taking the short (video) cut

HireVue, Spark Hire, and myInterview are among the providers of one-way video interviews—which typically involve a candidate filming themselves answering questions on a computer or phone, while a clock keeps track of an allotted time limit. Some applications use AI scoring metrics to assess candidate performance, but not all.

• Spark Hire, for example, provides video recordings sans AI, “for a number of reasons including the practicality/viability of AI models, the legal risk it could pose to our customers, and the candidate experience,” Matt Lerner, the company’s director of marketing, told HR Brew in an email.

Lerner wrote that HR departments can save time by relegating the scutwork of preliminary screening to a recording. “Let's say a recruiter has 100 applicants for a job and, on paper, 50 of them appear qualified. With a traditional phone screen, it just won't be feasible for that recruiter to speak with 50 people for 30 minutes at a time based on the pressure they face from the business to help hire for the open job.”

Some applicants, however, have complained online that the impersonal nature of the process can be daunting when trying to communicate one’s skills.

Click here to read the full story from HR Brew.—SB

Stat: Since 2016, 60 governments have enacted 935 internet shutdowns, Rest of World reports.

Quote: “The winning chemistry, in my mind, is the one that everyone uses and everyone wants. And that’s very clearly LFP.”—Taylor Ogan, CEO of green-tech hedge fund Snow Bull Capital, to Emerging Tech Brew on the long-ignored, now popular LFP battery chemistry

Read: Can VR help alleviate chronic pain?

Crypto-curious? Read about why crypto matters—and how you can join the fray—in our Crypto Crash Course, sponsored by eToro.*

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Three of the following news stories are true, and one...we made up. Can you spot the odd one out?

• Sony is building out a “game preservation” team.
• Jennifer Doudna, pioneer of Crispr, says we could engineer microbes to fight climate change.
• The biggest funding round of the year so far was just announced—for a consumer jetpack.
• Facebook is reportedly not completely sure where your data goes once it’s been collected.

For an AI-based time machine: OpenAI’s Dall-E can apparently “unmodernize” images. Three examples: a Tesla, a Jackson Pollock painting, and an iPhone.

For a sense of control: Can you reach net zero in this game?

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

• A previously ignored battery chemistry is now surging in popularity. Here’s why
• Meet Jigar Shah, who runs the DOE office that helped Tesla get its start
• Vertical farms have the vision, but do they have the energy?