DRONES

The Octocopter Surprise

While Amazon’s mechanical ground game is unmatched, its robots aren’t quite ready to conquer the skies. 

Amazon is laying off dozens from the R&D and manufacturing arms of Prime Air, the FT reported yesterday. The internal assessment = Fully operational drone delivery is still years away.

At first glance...

...personnel changes signal turbulence. 

But Amazon could be picking and choosing its battles. The company is inching toward drone manufacturing deals with Aernnova Aerospace (in Spain) and FACC Aerospace (in Austria). As you may have surmised, both are in the aerospace biz. What could they bring to the table? 

• Speciality manufacturing, i.e., integrating components for Prime Air’s newest drone, which is fully electric and stocked with visual, thermal, and sonar sensors. 
• Scale manufacturing, i.e., producing more than what a corporate R&D lab can do.

And now, a Prime Air parlor game

We know 10,000+ Amazonians are working on Alexa. We know Amazon has spent hundreds of millions developing its Go autonomous store technology. We know squat about Prime Air, a hush-hush group housed within a secretive company. Going off public announcements: 

• Roughly 3.67 million minutes ago, Jeff Bezos told 60 Minutes that Amazon had a secretive drone unit. One day, Bezos said in December 2013, “octocopter” drones would fly parcels to customers’ doorsteps in half an hour. 
• Amazon received permission from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to begin testing drone deliveries in August 2019. 
• In August 2020, the FAA granted Amazon air carrier certification. 

The inevitable comparisons: UPS and Walmart, which also have air carrier certification, are actively and publicly piloting drone delivery. Amazon’s brick-and-mortar nemesis is trying to find a winning horse by betting on many, striking drone partnership agreements across the U.S. 

• On Tuesday, Walmart began drone-delivering Covid-19 test kits in El Paso, TX. 

Big picture: This news squares with our assessment in the special e-commerce project published with Retail Brew yesterday—delivery drones are currently “nowhere” in the grand scheme of things. 

AUTOMATION

Automated For the People

We’ll always have to worry about Mr. Steal Your Girl, but when it comes to robots, Mr. Steal Your Job isn’t an immediate threat. 

That’s according to a new MIT report on the future of work, which suggests that the idea emerging technologies will cause widespread job elimination is somewhat overhyped. 

• The authors say that overall, similar to past technology-induced labor shifts, automation will both eliminate and create jobs—maybe even at relatively similar rates. 
• "The adoption and deployment of these technologies take time, and we're just at the beginning of a 30- to 40-year cycle," said Elisabeth Reynolds, the task force’s executive director, according to Axios. 

In prepping for the robot takeover, there’s still a lot of work to be done: making big changes to labor policies, reskilling and retraining workers, and securing more federal investment in R&D. 

Bottom line: AI, robotics, and other emerging tech will continue to advance. If today’s labor market—and the institutions behind it—don’t catch up, the MIT report’s authors argue, “we will see similar effects to recent decades: downward pressure on wages, skills, and benefits, and an increasingly bifurcated labor market.” 

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GAMING

Don't Hate the Player

Everyone knows Nvidia as the MVC: most valuable chipmaker. But when it comes to cloud gaming, it’s also a team player. 

Today, the company launched a mobile web app version of GeForce Now, its game streaming service, in beta. The workaround—bypassing Apple’s App Store—will allow more than 5 million users to play Epic Games’ Fortnite and other games by logging into Safari on an iPhone or iPad. 

Amazon took the same approach with its game streaming service, Luna, and Nvidia is following in its footsteps. The move will finally allow Apple users to play console-style games—whether the video game developer has famously crossed Apple or not. 

• Microsoft may do the same thing when its game streaming service, xCloud, launches on iPhone. 

+ While we’re here: A new suite of chips for gaming computers and consoles helped boost Nvidia’s latest earnings more than expected. On Wednesday, it announced revenue was up 57% year-over-year. 

BITS & BYTES

Stat: Social gaming platform Roblox filed to go public; Its S-1 mentions “metaverse” 16 times.  

Quote: “Data is no fleeting matter. We have no current plans to make data disappear after 24 hours.”—Microsoft Excel has spoken: It’s not pairing stories with spreadsheets any time soon. 

Read: Time dropped The Best Inventions of 2020. Our algorithm, which is really just a human in a computer, tells us Emerging Tech Brew has featured, profiled, or otherwise covered 15% of the finalists.  

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WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• The FTC is cutting enforcement case costs and freezing hiring, according to an internal memo seen by Big Technology’s Alex Kantrowitz. 
• Arrival, a British EV startup, is going public. We’re not even going to say the investment vehicle they’re using. You know. 
• China says it has more 5G base stations than the rest of the world combined. 
• Pfizer and BioNTech are requesting emergency use approval of their vaccine today.
• Rocket Lab brought a rocket back to Earth using parachutes—part of a reusability test. 

GOING PHISHING

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

1. A bovine facial recognition app is almost ready to hit the market. 
2. AI analysis is now being used to help decide on choice cuts of steak. 
3. Future Martians and moon people could use microbes to mine metals, based on a recent space experiment.
4. Robotic “monster wolves” are helping keep wild bears at bay in Japan. 

TECH THINGAMABOBS

For non-sus news: The developers behind Among Us are hinting that a new map is on the way.

For an AI game engine: Nvidia Research recreated Pac-Man by training its neural network model, GameGAN, on 50,000 “episodes” of the game. Here’s a run-through. 

ICYMI

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

• E-scooter company Bird explores a potential SPAC 
• Reports: Uber in talks to sell self-driving division
• Walmart and Cruise team up 

GOING PHISHING ANSWER

For the moment, steak seems to be safe from the AI boom.