The Innovator's Radar newsletter enables you to stay on top of the latest business innovations. Enjoy this week's edition.
Jennifer L. Schenker
Innovator Founder and Editor-in-Chief |
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OpenAI announced Voice Engine, a text-to-speech AI model for creating synthetic voices based on a 15-second segment of recorded audio, but then, out of concerns for its misuse, the company decided to delay its introduction. In a blog post explaining its decision the company proposed changes it said society will have to make to prepare for the introduction of the technology. Among them: Phasing out voice -based authentication as a security measure for accessing bank accounts and other sensitive information. Banks and financial services providers are among the first companies to be targeted. Researchers and reporters have shown that voice-cloning technology can be used to break into bank accounts that use voice authentication (such as Chase’s Voice ID), which prompted U.S. senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, to send a letter to the CEOs of several major banks in May 2023 to inquire about the security measures banks are taking to counteract AI-powered risks. Even if OpenAI never widely releases its Voice Engine, the ability to clone voices has already caused trouble in society through phone scams such as imitating a loved one’s voice or election campaign robocalls featuring cloned voices from politicians like U.S. President Joe Biden. Read on to learn more about this story and the week's most important technology news impacting business. |
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| The automotive industry is responsible for around 10% of greenhouse gas emissions but the impact on the environment doesn’t end there. Cars consume a lot of energy before they ever hit the highway. Automotive production leaves a giant footprint because materials like steel, rubber, glass, plastics, paints, and many more must be created. And, at the end of a car’s life plastics, toxic battery acids, and other products end up in trash dumps and may stay in the environment.
Under pressure from regulators and consumers. car makers have set targets for carbon neutrality and are investing heavily in electrification, new service offerings and new mobility solutions. They are also replacing materials inside cars with greener alternatives.
But these moves are not enough for the industry to get to Net Zero. Car companies must cut both upstream and downstream emissions to meet the Paris Agreement’s zero emission targets for 2050.
France’s Renault Group, which has created what it claims is the first 360°circular economy company in the automotive world, believes it has the solution for the materials footprint. Its' name says it all: The Future is NEUTRAL.
The company wants to use old cars to build new ones, without drawing on new natural resources and says it is the first to operate across the entire value chain, from procurement to production to end-of-life recycling.
The project has four priorities – increasing the lifespan of vehicles, developing closed-loop recycling of batteries, optimizing the ability to dismantle end-of-life vehicles and re-use parts, and accelerating education, research, and development around the circular economy model. It is targeting the entire European auto industry.
Circularity can enable automakers and mobility providers to tap new sources of value beyond the limits of their current business models — with an opportunity to improve profitability across the value chain by 50% and generate lifetime revenues 15 to 20 times greater than the vehicle’s initial sales price, according to a report by Accenture, the World Economic Forum and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. The report says the greatest value pools would be achieved mainly through as-a-service models, including leasing/subscription, car sharing, and mobility as a service, as well as through lifecycle services of remanufacturing, repair and recycling. |
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Who: Miikka Leinonen, the founder of Ghost, a strategy consultancy, is the author of "Your Business Strategy for the Intangible Future," a new book that seeks to serve as a roadmap for leaders navigating a landscape dominated by non-tangible forces.
Topic: How to design the future
Quote: "As the business landscape evolves, mastering the distinctive roles and synergies of the tangible and intangible becomes crucial for business owners, leaders, and executives. The future belongs to those who can traverse both worlds without difficulty."
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French scaleup Tilkal uses blockchain and machine learning to help customers gain control over their supply chains and make them more resilient, sustainable, and ethical. Customers include chocolate company Valrhona, global food company Danone and luxury brand Longchamp.
“Most companies know their tier 1 suppliers, it is rare to have a full list of tier 2 suppliers and at level 3 many have no idea,” says Tilkal CEO Matthieu Hug. “Knowing the origin of raw materials builds in resilience because you can’t measure what you can’t control.”
Tilkal works across sectors to help clients collect and aggregate operational, environmental, and social data; prove origin and impact from raw materials to end products; analyze and score risks; demonstrate compliance from origin to shipment and build digital product passports for external or internal use.
It is one of 48 deeptech scaleups with the potential to solve major global challenges that were selected to join The EIC Scaling Club, a curated community that includes investors, corporate innovators and other industry stakeholders. (The Innovator’s Editor-in-Chief is on advisory board of The EIC Scaling Club, an arm of The European Innovation Council).
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Number of days automated stores can operate per week in Germany. Be they robotic or staffed by humans, shops in Germany are not allowed to open on the last day of the week as Sunday rest is enshrined in the country's constitution. The highest administrative court in the German state of Hesse said Sunday rest must be observed even when there are no human workers involved. In an interview with the Financial Times a member of the management board of Germany’s regional supermarket chain Tegut, which operates 40 fully automated shops, called the ruling “grotesque.” Regardless of whether robots really need rest, robot law is an emerging specialist field of law. A legal framework is required to deal with this new type of worker. First, we had natural persons (or humans), then juristic persons (like companies or trusts). Now we have a new kind of "person" – the robot.
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CyberTech Global, Tel Aviv, Israel, April 8-10
Sparks Innovation Summit, Tel Aviv, Israel, April 10-12
Innovate to Nourish: Zero Hunger Workshop, Bogota, Colombia, April 23-24
Viva Technology, Paris, France, May 22-25 |
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