Category
Technology, Business & Society
Observing technological change through products, markets and everyday work.
11essays
01Who Will Pay for the Global GPU and Data-Centre Buildout?A platform may finance an AI data centre without bearing its entire eventual cost. Follow cash spending, leases, depreciation, cloud contracts and electricity tariffs to see where the risk lands.Oct 6, 202612 min read02When Do Humanoid Robots Make Sense?A human-shaped robot can fit spaces and tools built for people. Whether that benefit justifies two-legged mobility and complex manipulation depends on the task and its alternatives.Oct 2, 20267 min read03Why Household Robots Still Haven't Taken OffHousehold robots will not become ordinary because one machine can fold a shirt in a demo. They need to save more time than they add in supervision, recovery, maintenance, privacy and safety burden.Sep 29, 202612 min read04Why Robotics Is Hard: The Real World Has No API ContractRobotics is difficult not simply because models need to improve, but because perception errors, contact physics, latency, mechanical wear and human behaviour accumulate into uncertainty that the system must manage safely.Sep 6, 202612 min read05When Token Costs Approach Zero, What Remains Expensive?Falling model prices do not make the full cost of AI disappear. The scarce and expensive parts are moving into energy, usable data, integration, verification, trust and organizational change.Sep 4, 202612 min read06When Devices Become AI-Powered, Product Management Becomes Lifecycle ManagementAI-powered devices force product teams to manage hardware and model dependencies, capability limits, power budgets, OTA failure paths, data flows, cybersecurity and end-of-life support.Sep 3, 202614 min read07AI Cameras Need to Understand Events, Not Just Detect ObjectsThe next AI camera advantage is not simply detecting more objects. It is turning continuous video into a small number of trustworthy events through tracking, rules, edge filtering, VLM review and interoperable metadata.Aug 28, 202614 min read08Why Edge AI Matters Again: The Real Shift Is Where Inference RunsEdge AI is not replacing cloud AI. As AI moves into devices, cameras, robots and long-running agents, latency, connectivity, privacy, power and cost turn inference placement into a product architecture decision.Aug 22, 202613 min read09When Computer Vision Starts Understanding Events, Not Just ObjectsComputer vision is moving beyond object detection toward streaming video, event understanding and distributed edge inference. The harder question is who defines what counts as an event and what the system is allowed to do next.Aug 19, 202612 min read10What Is Physical AI? Why the Next Wave of AI Will Leave the ScreenGenerative AI transformed how we create and process information. Physical AI goes further: machines begin to perceive, reason and act in the real world, where latency, safety, hardware and failure suddenly matter much more.Aug 15, 202610 min read11Will AI Become Public Infrastructure Like Electricity and the Internet?As AI becomes a capability every sector depends on, the important questions shift from model performance to access, rules, cost and responsibility. Electricity, the internet and public compute point to three plausible futures.Aug 3, 202611 min read
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