RSS Feed Source: MIT Technology Review

Cloud has become a given for most organizations: according to PwC’s 2023 cloud business survey, 78% of companies have adopted cloud in most or all parts of the business. These companies have migrated on-premises systems to the cloud seeking faster time to market, greater scalability, cost savings, and improved collaboration.

Yet while cloud adoption is widespread, research by McKinsey shows that companies’ concerns around the resiliency and reliability of cloud operations, coupled with an ever-evolving regulatory environment, are limiting their ability to derive full value from the cloud. As the value of a business’s data grows ever clearer, the stakes of making sure that data is resilient are heightened. Business leaders now justly fear that they might run afoul of mounting data regulations and compliance requirements, that bad actors might target their data in a ransomware attack, or that an operational disruption

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RSS Feed Source: MIT Technology Review

Last year, as the harvest season drew closer, Olabokunde Tope came across an unpleasant surprise. 

While certain spots on his 70-hectare cassava farm in Ibadan, Nigeria, were thriving, a sizable parcel was pale and parched—the result of an early and unexpected halt in the rains. The cassava stems, starved of water, had withered to straw. 

“It was a really terrible experience for us,” Tope says, estimating the cost of the loss at more than 50 million naira ($32,000). “We were praying for a miracle to happen. But unfortunately, it was too late.”  

When the next planting season rolled around, Tope’s team weighed different ways to avoid another cycle of heavy losses. They decided to work with EOS Data Analytics, a California-based provider of satellite imagery and data for precision farming. The company uses wavelengths of light including the near-infrared, which penetrates plant canopies

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RSS Feed Source: MIT Technology Review

If you took a walk in Hayes Valley, San Francisco’s epicenter of AI froth, and asked the first dude-bro you saw wearing a puffer vest about the future of the interface, he’d probably say something about the movie Her, about chatty virtual assistants that will help you do everything from organize your email to book a trip to Coachella to sort your text messages.

Nonsense. Setting aside that Her (a still from the film is shown above) was about how technology manipulates us into a one-sided relationship, you’d have to be pudding-brained to believe that chatbots are the best way to use computers. The real opportunity is close, but it isn’t chatbots.

Instead, it’s computers built atop the visual interfaces we know, but which we can interact with more fluidly, through whatever combination of voice and touch is most natural. Crucially, this won’t just

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