Category: What We’re Reading

From TechCrunch: Researchers are now thinking about how robots and humans can work in close proximity to humans and even learn from them.

From CNN: The coming decades will see the growth of colossal megacities as the world's population increasingly moves into urban environments, a new United Nations report predicts.

From Recode: Amazon Go allows customers to grab items and just walk out without stopping to pay.

From WIRED UK: Fulfillment centers are coming to underground parking garages, moving distribution from out-of-town warehouses to right next to where people live.

From Bloomberg: The so-called retail apocalypse has become so ingrained in the U.S. that it now has the distinction of its own Wikipedia entry.

From TechCrunch: Waymo, the former Google self-driving car company is launching public road tests of its autonomous minivans with no safety driver on board.

From the Wall Street Journal: History shows technology fuels new kinds of jobs in addition to the ones it renders obsolete.

From the Wall Street Journal: Adapting to changing customer habits, another retailer tries inventory-free stores.

From CBS News: With our economy becoming more and more dependent upon machines, what will that mean for the future of employment?

From Fast Company: If you live in Las Vegas, El Paso, or Louisville, there’s a particularly good chance that your job could be taken by a robot in the next two decades.

By John Markoff: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots A well-researched introduction to the history of robotics and artificial intelligence in the United States.

From Business Insider: Struggling restaurant chains are turning to a new strategy to try and appeal to customers: delivery.

From The Atlantic: Economists expect that millions of American jobs are going to be replaced by automation in the coming decades. But where will those job losses take place?

From Business Insider: Amazon and the rise of online shopping have been repeatedly blamed for the staggering rate of store closures and bankruptcies disrupting the retail industry in the US.

From re/code: Collaborative robots are expected to account for a third of that market.

From the Wall Street Journal: Funding round to allow company to open e-commerce distribution centers in more cities.

From The Wall Street Journal: Artificial intelligence, long a subject of fanciful forecasts, is starting to enter the corporate world in a much bigger way, as costs decline and the need increases to identify patterns within ever-growing troves of business data.

From Vox: Even if you’ve dismissed AI technology in the past, there are two big reasons to start taking it seriously.

From The New Yorker: In some trials, “deep learning” systems have outperformed human experts.