Hi / Kia ora,

Welcome to another Memia weekly scan across emerging tech, global change and the unfolding future, as viewed from Aotearoa New Zealand.

The most clicked link in the last issue (~9% of openers) was the very clever Augmented Reality Tetris video.

After you, no after you💉

Boris Johnson has taken the UK to the front of the vaccine queue.

AoNZ science communicator Siouxsie Wiles has some characteristically robust opinions on the British government’s emergency use authorisation to rollout the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA Covid-19 vaccine from this week.

…Perhaps wise not to be directly at the front of this particular queue.🤔

The Spinoff @TheSpinoffTV

Boris Johnson has taken the UK to front of the vaccine queue. Are they cutting corners? Here's @SiouxsieW

Siouxsie Wiles: Britain’s emergency rush to a vaccine rollout, explainedBoris Johnson has announced that the Pfizer vaccine will be distributed from next week. How did that happen, and are they cutting corners? Siouxsie Wiles explains. The UK has become the first country in the world to approve a Covid-19 vaccine. It’s an emergency approval but means they’re likely tthespinoff.co.nz

Insurance retreat: a BIG play🔥🌊

Te Kōmata o te Tonga / The Deep South Challenge: Changing with our Climate is a National Science Challenge aiming to “enable New Zealanders to adapt, manage risk and thrive in a changing climate”.

Last week, (just after the hottest November globally since records began) Deep South released a report authored by principal investigator Belinda Storey (Climate Sigma): Insurance Retreat: Sea Level Rise and the Withdrawal of Residential Insurance in New Zealand. The culmination of 3 years of research, the report has some stark findings, with thousands of low-lying AoNZ homes at risk of losing cover as insurers retreat from the market:

These are some of the first local insurance market signals we’re seeing related to climate change. They won’t be the last.

So…here’s a BIG play: in Memia 2020.35 I talked about hedging the Keeling Curve, which tracks the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. Given the AI-enabled advances we are seeing in bio science - just one example, Deepmind’s spectacular protein-folding result last week - who would consider a wager on similarly rapid breakthroughs in photoreactive capture (“artificial photosynthesis”) which uses energy from sunlight to fix carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere at megaton scale?

Progress is being made on a number of fronts, most recently:

Memia @memialabs

Like a Leaf – New Artificial Photosynthesis Method to Capture CO2 Directly From the Air and Turn It Into Fuel

Like a Leaf – New Artificial Photosynthesis Method to Capture CO2 Directly From the Air and Turn It Into FuelArgonne and SLAC will develop artificial photosynthesis methods to enable direct air capture of CO2 while expanding sources of energy through the conversion of CO2 to fuels and other useful chemicals. Leaves make it look easy, but capturing and using carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air is a chabuff.ly

*If* this research delivers what it promises, the global reinsurers who incorporate it earliest into their models could win BIG. (As will humanity…)

Geography is not destiny?🌏

The latest draft report from the AoNZ Productivity Commission on Aotearoa’s frontier firms is worth a read:

“Geography is not destiny - New Zealand can do better…An opportunity exists for New Zealand to change key aspects of the status quo and lift performance. It is not about tearing things down and starting again. In many ways New Zealand is already an innovative place, but it needs to get much better at turning those good ideas into world-leading firms.”

I wonder what could change?🦧

[Weak] signals

Memia’s regular collation of tech-related signals from the near and far future:

Capitalism solved💰✔️

Banking just got competitive: financial services software giant Stripe launched Stripe Treasury, a “banking-as-a-service API” that enables simple integration for customers to hold funds, pay bills, earn interest, manage cash flow. Box founder Aaron Levie has a hot take:

Aaron Levie @levie

@patrickc I mean you would just hook up Stripe Corporation to GPT-3 AND capitalism is solved.

ICC - International Climate Court?

International lawyers draft plan to criminalise ecosystem destruction.

China deep science x2

Two impressive items of deep science news coming out of China this week:
- Researchers from USTC Shanghai claimed that for the first time, a quantum computer made from photons achieved quantum supremacy, outperforming all classical supercomputers. Unlike other quantum computers built using supercooled superconductors, the USTC Shanghai researchers used “an elaborate tabletop setup of lasers, mirrors, prisms and photon detectors” which can also operate at room temperature.
  - (Australian ex-Google quantum scientist John Martinis cast doubt on the results).
- In other developments, China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) commissioned its new “artificial sun” nuclear fusion reactor research facility which operates at 150 million degrees Celsius - 10 times as hot as the sun.

(CB)DCs

ICYMI (I did) Facebook-initiated Libra digital currency consortium changed its name to Diem “to reinforce its organisational independence”.
Chinese eCommerce mall JD.com launched a pilot program to test the rapidly maturing Digital Yuan - which so far has been used in more than 4M transactions, worth a total of about 2 billion yuan (US$306 million).
Meanwhile the Economist writes about how Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) could disintermediate traditional banks - and is that actually a bad thing?

I can’t believe it’s not chicken🍗

Singapore approves lab-grown chicken meat from US company EatJust for public consumption.

Rotten Apple core😮

Apple patched a rather scary security hole in the IoS kernel:

Cory Doctorow #BLM @doctorow

AWDL is Apple's mesh networking protocol, a low-level, device-to-device wireless system that underpins tools like Airdrop. It is implemented in the Ios kernel, a high-privilege, high-risk zone in Iphone and Ipad internals. 1/

Self-driving chassis:

PIX Moving @thepixmoving

PIX full #AutonomousDriving chassis platform matrix covering multiple sizes, based on which a diverse range of #SelfDriving robo-vehicles have been developed by PIX ecosystem partners in various industries from #MobileRetailing #SmartRealEstate to #AutonomousDelivery and more

Flying hy(drogen)🛫⚛️

Airbus bets on Hydrogen to deliver zero emission jets.

Regulating AI

I've had a number of conversations this week about regulating AI, prompted by:

The international not-for-profit Partnership on AI launched an AI Incident Database to gather data from when AI fails (nice work by kiwi Sam Yoon who contributed early on).
Research supported by the NZ Law Foundation found a “regulation gap” for facial recognition technology in Aotearoa.
Iranian media *alleged* that the assassination of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was carried out by an autonomous AI-assisted machine gun:
Memia @memialabs
Iranian nuclear scientist allegedly assassinated via killer robot Iranian nuclear scientist allegedly assassinated via killer robotA top nuclear scientist with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a branch of Iran’s military services, was assassinated on 27 November in what the Iranian government is calling an assassination via AI-powered machine gun. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated while traveling in a convoy outs…buff.ly
December 8th 2020

Meanwhile the Guardian reports that the UK’s 5-year defence review will lead to investment in robot warfare: ‘Robot soldiers could make up a quarter of the British army by the 2030s’.

Australia in space

(Keep up!)

InnovationAus @Innov_Aus

Local rocket startup @GilmourSpace Technologies has signed a multi million $ partnership with US @momentusspace to offer launch & orbital transport services from an Aus site. Momentus provides last-mile services to put small satellites into correct orbits. buff.ly/2JJ0I5t

Mind expanding

Mike Elias, founder of IdeaMarket.io, published a groundbreaking 3-part treatise on Epistemic Reserve Notes - translating the concepts of reserve banking to truth, knowledge and trust in the modern information age, concluding:
“Credulity is the new skepticism The metaphor of risk management implies credulity should replace skepticism as the guiding principle of public inquiry.”
Block out a long sit down to read and absorb in full.

Rollcall

Shout outs around AoNZ to:

Tāmaki Makaurau-based legal AI startup McCarthy Finch was acquired by US enterprise workflow provider Onit.
25yo Kiwi serial inventor Logan Williams is at it again with Keravos, a biodegradeable plastic replacement made from wool and corn starch.
Judgements as Data: huge kudos to emerging tech / legal researchers Tom Barraclough, Curtis Barnes and Warren Forster for publishing their latest report arguing for open digital access to AoNZ Case Law:

“Put simply, people with commercial subscriptions to case law databases get access to written decisions of the courts that others do not. They also get access to vastly superior tools for navigating those written decisions…The current system is an anachronism from a period in which the legal system was shaped by paper documents, and deserves to be updated. A future system is possible utilising [modern internet based] digital technologies and publishing processes”

A key piece of “shovel ready” digital infrastructure ready for investment to bring our legal system into the 21st century!

Hidden gems

Stumbled upon culture around the internet this week:

What does a Communist sci-fi movie look like? IKARIE XB-1, a Czech sci-fi film from 1963, is getting a 4K re-release and will stream with Film Forum from December 4 .
Image: Janus Films

Wakeboarding just reached another level of fun:

Jeroen Bartelse @JeroenBartelse

Drones towing people on wakeboards, skis - what's next? dronedj.com/2020/12/02/dro… via @DroneDJ #weekendvibes #drone #uav @SpirosMargaris @jblefevre60 @Nicochan33 @alvinfoo @FrRonconi @ShiCooks @mvollmer1 @PawlowskiMario @enricomolinari @DrJDrooghaag @RLDI_Lamy