According to Gartner, the worldwide end-user spending on all IT products for 2024 was $5 trillion. This industry is built on a computing fabric of electrons, is fully software-defined, accelerated — and now generative AI-enabled. While huge, it’s a fraction of the larger physical industrial market that relies on the movement of atoms. Today’s 10 Read Article
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What Comes After the LLM: Human-Centered AI, Spatial Intelligence, and the Future of Practice
In a recent episode of High Signal, we spoke with Dr. Fei-Fei Li about what it really means to build human-centered AI, and where the field might be heading next.
Fei-Fei doesn’t describe AI as a feature or even an industry. She calls it a “civilizational technology”—a force as foundational as electricity or computing itself. This has serious implications for how we design, deploy, and govern AI systems across institutions, economies, and everyday life.
Our conversation was about more than short-term tactics. It was about how foundational assumptions are shifting, around interface, intelligence, and responsibility, and what that means for technical practitioners building real-world systems today.
Spatial computing, wearables and robots: AI’s next frontier
Spatial computing, an emerging 3D-centric computing model, merges AI, computer vision and sensor technologies to create fluid interfaces between the physical and digital. Unlike traditional models, which require people to adapt to screens, spatial computing allows machines to understand human environments and intent through spatial awareness.
Recent trademark filings and product launches show AI companies targeting the physical world with wearables and robots driven by complex spatial computing.
Robots with a collective brain: The revolution of shared intelligence
In a world where automation is advancing by leaps and bounds, collaboration between robots is no longer science fiction. Imagine a warehouse where dozens of machines transport goods without colliding, a restaurant where robots serve dishes to the correct tables, or a factory where robot teams instantly adjust their tasks according to demand.
Advancing earthquake prediction with an unmanned aerial vehicle
Megathrust earthquakes are large earthquakes that occur on faults found along the boundaries between tectonic plates. The Nankai Trough is a megathrust earthquake zone lying off the southwestern coast of Japan, and experts estimate that this zone could generate a potentially devastating (magnitude 8 or 9) large earthquake sometime in the next 30 years. In addition to the direct catastrophic impact of such powerful ground shaking, a seismic event of this magnitude could trigger cascading hazards such as destructive tsunamis.
Developing the technologies for efficient and reliable seafloor monitoring is paramount when considering the potential for socioeconomic harm represented by megathrust earthquakes. Traditionally, seafloor measurements have been obtained using transponder stations located on the seafloor that communicate with satellites via buoys or ocean-going vessels to produce accurate positional information. However, data collection using such systems has problems such as low efficiency and speed.
In a study published in Earth and Space Science, researchers at Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, addressed the challenge of acquiring reliable, high-precision, real-time seafloor measurements by constructing a seaplane-type unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that can withstand ocean currents and wind. This vehicle is intended for use with the Global Navigation Satellite System-Acoustic (GNSS-A)―a system that uses satellites to determine locations on Earth―to provide a communication link with seafloor transponder stations.
For the first time, researchers at #UTokyo_IIS, quickly and efficiently measure the seafloor down to the centimeter-level using an unmanned aerial vehicle.