New Week #71
New York City move to ban super-fast grocery delivery. People prefer to talk to 'female' robots. Plus more news and analysis from this week.
Welcome to the mid-week update from New World Same Humans, a newsletter on trends, technology, and society by David Mattin.
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This week, an NYC politician introduces a bill intended to scupper the new wave of instant, on-demand delivery services, including Gorillas.
Meanwhile, a new study suggests that people want robot helpers to present as female. And researchers develop an AI that can teach brain surgery better than expert brain surgeons.
Let’s go!
🏃♂️ Not so fast
This week, a New York City politician announced moves to squash the rise of on-demand, 15-minute grocery delivery.
Councilman Christopher Marte says he will introduce a bill that would stop apps from advertising 15-minute delivery times. The measure is aimed at a new generation of services, including Gorillas, JOKR, and Fridge No More, that are transforming the retail and grocery landscape.
Gorillas swept through Berlin after launching in that city in May 2020, fuelled by lockdown disruption to established services. The promise was simple: bike-powered delivery within unthinkably small timeframes.
Just 18 months later the company operates in multiple cities across Europe and the US. Last week the New York Times wondered aloud if problems that have been attributed to the rise of Gorillas in Berlin – including increased road congestion and the demise of local grocery stores – will soon come to NYC.
Meanwhile, citizens in Amsterdam are reported to be increasingly unhappy about the Gorillas effect. They point to the rise of ‘dark stores’ – closed shops used only by Gorillas riders – in residential neighbourhoods, causing increased traffic and noise.
Gorillas raised $1 billion in October, on a valuation of $2.1 billion.
⚡ NWSH Take: We’ve been talking for years about on-demand consumerism and its consequences. What I didn’t expect? The rise of yet another generation of platforms that put instant customer satisfaction above all else. // Gorillas claimed they would usher in a new, enlightened on-demand age; its riders are full employees. But that promise collapsed amid widespread rider claims of unreliable pay and poor safety. Meanwhile, residents say instant delivery services are reconfiguring their cities. // Where next? Even as Uber continues to fight city authorities across the US, we’ll see the rise of a whole new wave of disputes between platforms, workers, and cities: a kind of on-demand Groundhog Day. // Long-term? Does anyone believe that 15-minute grocery delivery is the future? Sure, instant toothpaste feels great. But we need to build a consumerism that goes beyond feels great. Last year I wrote about the idea that what we need now most of all is freedom from the tyranny of our own preferences. Freedom from ourselves: it might just be the most revolutionary thought possible inside 21st-century consumerism. Could the rise of Gorillas be the opportunity we needed to put that thought into practice?
💸 Bank on it
JP Morgan says it’s the first bank to enter the metaverse.
The financial giant has established a branch called the Onyx Lounge inside the virtual world Decentraland.
Enter the Lounge and you’ll find yourself in a reception room featuring a pacing tiger and a floating portrait of CEO Jamie Dimon. Okay, sure 🤷♂️
The move coincides with the bank’s new report Opportunities in the Metaverse, in which it says that virtual worlds will ‘infiltrate every sector in the coming years’, and represent a $1 trillion a year opportunity for businesses of all kinds.
🤖 He said, she said
New research suggests that people prefer speaking to robots that they perceive to be female.
Researchers at Washington State University surveyed 170 trial participants on hypothetical scenarios involving robot helpers in hotels. They found higher levels of reported satisfaction when the robots were depicted as female.
Meanwhile, Apple just launched a new American voice for Siri. Tech publications say the voice sounds more gender-neutral that previous versions; Apple will only confirm that it was recorded ‘by a member of the LGBTQ+ community’. Judge for yourself:
Last year, new American voices were recorded by Black actors; Apple said that was part of the company’s ‘long-standing commitment to diversity and inclusion’.
⚡ NWSH Take: Sure, the Washington State research is questionable; participants were asked to imagine talking to robots. But the result aligns with what we’ve long suspected: if technology is to be personified, most people prefer it to present as female. Gendered power dynamics are at the heart of that. // So far, that truth has played out primarily in the realm of voices: Sat Navs, AI assistants. This research is valuable, primarily, as a reminder that the issue is about to be embodied in new ways. That won’t come primarily via robots; after all, it’s easy to build a robot with no gender identity at all. But courtesy of Samsung and others, a first wave of mass market virtual humans is about to arrive; when your favourite brand launches a virtual brand ambassador, how will it be gendered? And what about the avatars we’ll all soon use to step inside virtual worlds? / As if you haven’t noticed: these questions are arising right as the entire issue of gender is being problematised as never before. Issues around the gender identity of virtual humans and avatars might seem fringe or esoteric. So, once, did the entire debate around trans rights. Expect fireworks.
🧠 We can teach it to you wholesale
AI may be better than human brain surgeons at teaching brain surgery, according to a study published this week.
Researchers at McGill University created a VR environment in which students could practise basic brain surgery procedures. They then compared the effectiveness of an AI instructor against that of expert human tuition delivered remotely.
After the practise sessions, independent assessors rated those who had been taught by the AI as more improved than those who had received instruction from other humans.
⚡ NWSH Take: AIs could supercharge learning in a range of other disciplines, too, especially those that involve highly structured processes that play out inside bounded domains. How about an AI teacher for mechanics, or architects? For nuclear physicists, or the screenplay writers who churn out those Marvel movies? // Just as the pandemic changed our working lives, it forced universities to shift to new remote and hybrid learning models. Now, that shift is set to collide with another: the emergence of effective AI teachers. In the 2020s, education is set to be disrupted to an extent not seen for generations, maybe ever. We’ll want our brain surgeons to talk to other brain surgeons for a long time to come. But for many other disciplines the traditional learning models, including university, may fade away faster than we expect.
🗓️ Also this week
👺 Forensic linguists say they have used AI to identify the originators of the QAnon conspiracy theory. Their analysis show that Paul Furber, a South African software developer, and Ron Watkins, a US citizen running for Congress in Arizona, wrote message the posts at the fountainhead of the movement. Both men deny the claim.
⛷ Twitter suspended hundreds of bot accounts that posted pro-China propaganda during the Beijing Winter Olympics. A report by investigative outlet ProPublica found a concerted effort, via thousands of bots, to hype the Games and downplay criticisms of China’s human rights record. Twitter is banned in China.
✈️ Airbus says it will test a hydrogen engine on an A380 jumbo jet in 2026. The airline industry accounts for 2% of the world’s carbon emissions.
🏰 A mansion in the UK has reportedly become the first property to go up for sale both IRL and in the metaverse. The 11-bedroom Hampton Hall can be yours for £29 million, which includes an NFT version that can be downloaded into Decentraland and other virtual worlds.
🚅 Virgin Hyperloop has shifted its focus from passengers to cargo, and laid off half its staff. Back in 2017 the company told journalists to ‘expect working hyperloops by 2020’. None have yet appeared.
😅 Donald Trump launched his long-promised social media platform, Truth Social. At first glance, it appears a straightforward rip off of Twitter. Trump was banned from Twitter and Facebook last year.
🌊 Three quarters of people worldwide want to ban single use plastics. That’s according to a new global survey by polling firm Ipsos; they say eight in ten would support an international treaty to address plastic pollution.
👨⚕️ Researchers at Yale say a 14% reduction in caloric intake can reduce inflammation and reverse age-related damage to the immune system. It’s long been known that calorie restriction can improve longevity in a range of animals. The Yale team say theirs is the first controlled study of caloric restriction in humans.
🤦♂️ A father who wanted to limits his child’s screen time ended up accidentally taking down the internet for his entire town. The parent, who lives in the French town of Messanges, used a multi-frequency jammer to stop his children going online between midnight and 3am.
🌍 Humans of Earth
Key metrics to help you keep track of Project Human.
🙋 Global population: 7,929,223,583
🌊 Earths currently needed: 1.8036924847
💉 Global population vaccinated: 55.3%
🗓️ 2022 progress bar: 15% complete
📖 On this day: On 23 February 1927 the German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg explains his uncertainty principle for the first time, in a letter to fellow physicist Wolfgang Pauli.
Gotta Be Me
Thanks for reading this week.
We’ll hear much more, across the coming decade, about the expression of identities in virtual worlds. The technologies are new. But the fundamental drivers of behaviour here – self-expression, status, and belonging – are as old as human nature.
NWSH will keep watching, and trying to make sense of what it all means for our shared future. And there’s one thing you can do to further that mission: share!
If you found this week’s instalment valuable, why not forward this email to a friend, family member, or colleague? Or share it across one of your social networks, with a note on why they should read. Remember: the larger and more diverse the NWSH community becomes, the better for all of us.
I’ll be back next week as usual. Be well,
David.
P.S Huge thanks to Nikki Ritmeijer for the illustration at the top of this email. And to Monique van Dusseldorp for additional research and analysis.