Greatest of All TOM's Profile

Eli Lilly’s OIDD program is a breath of fresh air in the pharmaceutical industry, as it allows for low cost drug discovery over traditional time-intensive and expensive R&D processes. While the program itself is already a large step towards the future of drug discovery, there are certain elements Eli Lilly can improve. The company can have explicit partnerships with institutions and universities, perhaps through special programs that include mentorship, funding, and recognition. In addition, it should implement a revenue sharing piece to the program to incentivize researchers to participate.

While I agree that Waze needs to encourage safe behavior by including hands-free voice recognition to identify road incidents, I disagree with your assertion that Waze’s police reporting feature is unethical and unsafe. Instead, Waze promotes safer, slower driving and partners with the police to “keep citizens safe, promote faster emergency response and help alleviate traffic congestion.” [1] If Waze were truly unethical, I believe that Google would not have acquired them and that the company would be shut down by now.

[1] Fleeman, Michael. “Google’s Waze App Fires Back Against Police Criticism.” Huffington Post, January 27, 2015. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/27/waze-police-tracking-criticism_n_6558408.html, accessed November 2018.

I agree that additive manufacturing has almost limitless bounds in the medical device field. I do think acquiring a manufacturer of AM equipment is the right move, especially if Medtronic wants to have a competitive edge over other firms such as Boston Scientific and Stryker. However, as with anything in the health care space, I would be concerned over how safe these 3D printed products are. Medtronic needs to conduct extensive research into how its AM products interact with the human body to ensure there are no significant negative side effects.

As we saw in Toyota, many auto manufacturers are shifting towards just-in-time inventory strategies. I think additive manufacturing can augment this system extremely well due to significantly reduced manufacturing costs and timeframes. Not only would the manufacturers be able to produce new parts more optimally, they would also be able to fix defects in a fraction of the time. However, you raise very valid concerns around how narrow the margin for error is in the automotive industry, which is exacerbated by how nascent additive manufacturing is. As a result, manufacturers need to ensure 3D printed parts are up to quality control standards and have mechanisms in place to address any potential issues stemming from 3D printed parts.

As I have Spotify blasting in the background while I write this comment, I can say that I’ve discovered a lot of amazing music through my Discover Weekly playlist. To stay ahead of the competition in this space, I agree that Spotify should leverage streaming data to predict a subscriber’s broader preferences. On top of this, the reverse of this strategy can work as well, with a subscriber’s social media preferences, shopping habits, and other data incorporated into Spotify’s machine learning algorithms for music recommendations.

This is a very interesting and controversial topic, especially given the recent midterm elections and unscrupulous Russian influence over political ad messaging. I agree that there needs to be much stricter regulation around the applications of machine learning and data mining in politics. I’d even go as far as allowing users to completely opt out of seeing any politically charged content on their social media feeds. I think there’s just too much potential for abuse in the system, both from domestic and foreign entities.