Intro

Good morning and welcome to the future 👋

Today’s update is 260 words, 1.3 minutes

Snippets

🥷 The Jedi plan: The antitrust battle involving Google and Facebook moved to the next round on Friday. An expanded complaint relating to collusion and unfair competition was filed by Texas, 14 other US states, and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. The companies are accused of ‘colluding’ to undermine Apple’s privacy protections. The Register →

🔮 The new world of 2031: As the pace of new developments in robotics, AI and virtual reality accelerates, do you ever wonder how different the world will be in ten years time? Tech Tent asked some big thinkers for their predictions. BBC →

📊 From Berkley to billionaire: Ali Ghodsi wanted to give his AI code away for free. But few would take it unless he charged for it. Now his startup Databricks is worth $28 billion, and he’s a billionaire with a reputation as one of the best CEOs in the Valley. Read his fascinating story… Forbes →

💡 ‘The new normal’: This must be one of the most irritating clichés of the Covid pandemic. All we want is our old lives back. Or do we? In one of his last essays, the late anthropologist David Graeber explains why ‘the old normal’ is the last thing we should be aiming for. Blog →

1-Big Thing

The ultimate humanoid

Source: Automaton Robotics

What’s the deal: Last week, this project made headlines, complete with a video of a realistic human-like robot arm.

Their goal is to create a universal robot with limitless capabilities. They want the robot to cook, play, and do whatever you tell him to do. The whole construction is based on a human skeleton and synthetic muscles.

Why it matters: If you want to build a robot that can do things like play soccer, clean, and knit, you’ll need muscles like humans.

However, no technology can provide everything required to create a good analogue of human muscles, yet.

Let us hope that this creator is able to make his system accomplish what he has set out to do.

They are seeking patrons. You can support the project on Patreon →.