SL's Profile

This is a fascinating concept! I too have a lot of concerns about the waste created by the fashion industry and it is clearly something that designers are concerned about (here is a interesting interview with designer Stella McCartney: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-43834233/stella-mccartney-fashion-is-swamping-our-planet). I do wonder how receptive other luxury brands would be to this technology given it disrupts their traditional business model, however I do feel that they can attract more consumers and create products more efficiently at a lower cost. And while luxury fashion houses may be viewed as traditional in how they manufacture products, they are considered cutting edge when it comes to product design and extending into cutting edge manufacturing seems like a natural progression. I absolutely think that the millennial generation is generally interested in locally made, lower-waste products – Vojd can use this as a differentiator to gain market share. The average consumer may not understand the concept of 3D printing but framing the idea in the context of sustainability would certainly attract consumers in my opinion.

Great article! You certainly raise some interesting questions. Your second question concerning quality really resonated with me – it could absolutely cause considerable problems if the drugs being produced had quality issues. This is further exacerbated by the fact that these machines would be in remote and rural areas – for example, AstraZeneca wouldn’t be able to send out an expert to operate the printer each time drugs were needed. I think that one way to combat the issue ties into your first point – ensuring that only trained individuals can access these products. Perhaps there is a way to innovate the technology so that local operators must collaborate with an AstraZeneca expert remotely so that AstraZeneca can still retain a portion of control over the production. If the local operators must communicate with company-employed experts to execute the printing process, the process could be remotely overseen and controlled by AstraZeneca to ensure that quality and access issues are being addressed.

This certainly raises some interesting points. I personally am skeptical that human content review will ever be able to be removed completely given the significant levels of judgement that can come into play when considering whether content is appropriate or not – there can and will be grey areas that will require human intervention. As societal and social norms evolve, content that was once considered appropriate may shift to inappropriate, and vice versa (for example, many views that were in the past considered acceptable would absolutely be considered offensive and inappropriate today). While the statistic that machines were able to flag 6.7M out of 8M indecent videos is staggering, the fact that humans were still required to flag 1.3M videos indicates to me that there is still a role for human interaction in the foreseeable future, and humans will likely be required to update the algorithms over time as society evolves.

Fascinating article! I certainly can see the benefits of such technology from an efficiency perspective – and I’m sure improvements in quality and standardization would also follow. You raise a good point when it comes to confidentiality – client confidentiality is obviously key for law firms. When it comes to confidentiality, I wonder how this will impact the dialogue with the client. Will clients need to be made aware that their information is being used with this software, and how might they react? I can see some clients being skeptical regarding their data being fed into a machine rather than assessed by a human. I think there is room for firms to work with clients to determine what concerns clients may have and how they can be addressed. You mention the prospect of hiring data scientists but I wonder if this opens the need for firms to also hire cyber security experts with specific knowledge in this realm if the technology is going to be scaled.

Great article! One thing that came to mind when reading the article was how Waze would continue to ensure the accuracy of its data as it grows. I see this being a concern especially as they begin partnering through the CCPs. If government officials will be using the data to respond to issues in real time, I wonder how Waze will ensure that they are continuing to provide accurate information. If government agencies are making major decisions based on the data from Waze and an incorrect decision is made because data is not accurate, this could have significant repercussions.

This is an incredibly interesting concept to address a major growing issue. I wonder if there may be a way to integrate a third level of crowd-sourcing to this structure – the stores. One of your questions is surrounding the cost of this venture, and you mention that the Plastic Bank is currently using company stores to collect the plastic, distribute funds, and sell goods to the collectors. I wonder if there is an opportunity to further reduce costs by not having to set up the infrastructure for these company run stores and somehow introduce this payment technology into local stores so that the company can outsource the management of the stores.