Category: futurism – Page 672
Roving with Perseverance: Findings from One Year on Mars (Live Public Talk)
After a year on the Red Planet, what can Perseverance teach us about Mars’ watery past and our potential future? Tune in to find out!
Speakers:
–Jennifer Trosper, Mars 2020 Project Manager, NASA/JPL
–Dr. Katie Stack Morgan, Deputy Project Scientist, Mars 2020, NASA/JPL
Host: brian white, public services office, NASA/JPL
Co-host: nikki wyrick, public services office, NASA/JPL
Are lifelike digital humans the future of customer experience?
Soul Machines, a New Zealand-based company that uses CGI, AI and natural language processing to create lifelike digital people who can interact with humans in real time, has raised $70 million in a Series B1 round, bringing its total funding to $135 million. The startup will put the funds toward enhancing its Digital Brain technology, which uses a technique called “cognitive modeling” to recreate things like the human brain’s emotional response system in order to construct autonomous animated characters.
The funding was led by new investor SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with additional participation from Cleveland Avenue, Liberty City Ventures and Solasta Ventures. Existing investors Temasek, Salesforce Ventures and Horizons Ventures also participated in the round.
While Soul Machines does envision its tech will be used for entertainment purposes, it’s mainly pursuing a B2B play that creates emotionally engaging brand and customer experiences. The basic problem the startup is trying to solve is how to create personal brand experiences in an increasingly digital world, especially when the main interaction most companies have with their customers is via apps and websites.
19-year-old Jack Sweeney has made a name for himself
Sweeney describes his conversations with the Tesla founder about the account and what he says Musk offered him to take it down.
Chile is making its own glaciers
This article is an installment of Future Explored, a weekly guide to world-changing technology. You can get stories like this one straight to your inbox every Thursday morning by subscribing here.
In recent years, mountain communities in Chile have been facing longer and more intense dry spells thanks, in part, to rapidly shrinking glaciers in the Andes. This puts serious stress on local communities that rely on their fresh water.
But a team of Chilean climate experts have come up with a solution. In 2022, they will attempt to DIY their own glaciers, in hopes of supplying fresh water through the dry, summer months.