I’ve had some interesting discussions recently about conference agendas for late 2024 and into 2025. “How do we avoid simply having the word AI everywhere?”

AI is clearly becoming ubiquitous, however much some elements are currently overhyped. Thus we can’t “not include it” in conferences and webinars. What we want is more specific use-cases that are detailed enough to be helpful but broad enough to inform a diverse audience.

AI-enabled agents feels like it sits in that sweet sport. Not to mention fitting nicely with the Digital Minions vs Digital Sherpa trope that I’ve discussed with many of you.

So, if you’re planning a 2025 conference with tech elements consider this as an agenda item.

For a good paper on the topic search for the recent one from McKinsey:

"Over the past couple of years, the world has marveled at the capabilities and possibilities unleashed by generative AI (gen AI). Foundation models such as large language models (LLMs) can perform impressive feats, extracting insights and generating content across numerous mediums, such as text, audio, images, and video. But the next stage of gen AI is likely to be more transformative.

We are beginning an evolution from knowledge-based, gen-AI-powered tools — say, chatbots that answer questions and generate content — to gen AI–enabled “agents” that use foundation models to execute complex, multistep workflows across a digital world. In short, the technology is moving from thought to action."

A picture paints 1000 words…

Most of you reading blog posts and articles online have by now seen lots of AI-generated imagery — even if you often weren’t aware that it was.

One of the better-known tools for making this art is called DALL.E and it is now available for free online from Microsoft — just go to Bing and select CoPilot towards the top. This will take you to the same type of prompt that we’re already used to for #Chat GTP but as well as asking it to create outputs of words (poems, homework assignments, away-day agendas) or to summarise documents or emails, you can now use it to create pictures.

It’s a little temperamental so if it doesn’t do your bidding first time do persevere a bit.

For the demo I gave I requested the obligatory examples of cute animals using the following prompts:
1. Please draw me a picture of a happy dog.
2. Please give it a Dutch theme.
3. Please make it more like a digital photo.
and for feline/canine balance
4. Please make a steampunk image of a bad-arse group of cats [x2]

I have only one professional use case so far — I had written a PowerPoint with a lot of images “from the web”. The night before my presentation the conference organiser said they would like to share the presentation afterwards on their website. I didn’t have the rights to several of the images and others had no licence to purchase. I therefore used the GenAI tool to create similar images that fitted the themes of my slides but which I could then use in a publicly-shareable presentation.

What other useful professional use-cases have people seen?

(Oh, and yes, I’m expecting some questions/thoughts (trolling even?) on the question of the appropriateness of using images trained on other people’s artwork and photos. And this is a critically important topic, but as things currently stand, what most GenAI tools produce can be freely used by the “creator” so let’s have that debate at a separate time.

In mid-March David Cabral posted this question on LinkedIn.

Is there a role for Space in ESG?

His post then continued as follows and tagged a number of experts and acquaintances. (Emphasis added by me.)

We are working on an exciting proposition and the role of Space has generated very heated discussions!

The Positives:
Space supports solutions that can be used to improve aspects of our world. A growing number of organisations own a fleet of small satellites that use infrared or radar to look through cloud cover and collect data to generate immediate insights into commodities, business development and environmental change (the price of micro-satellites is below $100 and dozens can be released in low orbit with a single rocket launch). These insights can: 1) generate predictions in areas such as crop yields, oil prices, prosperity; and 2) identify risks for certain industries at a corporate or local level, such as how much pollution a company’s factories emit.

The Negatives:
Using rockets to launch satellites is considered a “dirty” business.

Do the positives outweigh the negatives……..? Frank feedback would be appreciated!

This would have got me thinking generally. But in the context of the increasing discussions about #GreenTech & #ClimateTech my interest was doubly piqued.

Substantial comment followed as you can see if you go to the article. The parts that most stood out to me were about the low environmental impact of the launch and the plethora of examples of how satellite tech is supporting more sustainable ways of living.

How satellites are useful

Starting with the latter point: these start with the obvious — GPS allows vehicles to find the fastest route to their destination. While fastest and most fuel-efficient are not synonymous, no one can doubt the emission reduction that comes from being directed straight to your destination, rather than having to drive around for the last five minutes looking for street names and house numbers.

Maybe less obvious to most spectators is the use of satellite in farming. With such a huge share of inputs (energy and water) going into agriculture and efficiency improvement can have a notable effect. (As a side point on agriculture, the interest in this briefest of articles on Google’s agritech moonshot (called Mineral) was interesting to see.)

A third area is of course the use of satellite (for decades now) to monitor and understand the Earth and — in theory — help us make decisions around how to keep things more sustainable. Many people would comment that the reaction to what these satellites have told us is inadequate.

For those in the insurtech space, the use of satellites to support rapid reviews of claims after events — both major catastrophe events and more localised incidents — both speeds up the claims handling (leading to social good) and can remove the need to fly experts half-way across the world simply to inspect a destroyed building. (Matthew Grant posted a link to the recent InsTech London insurtech podcast about ICEYE.)

What is their carbon footprint?

Returning to the more novel point of the carbon footprint of a small satellite.

Charles Blanchet shared a link to an article where Elon is saying the carbon cost of a lanch is offset but the use of just a free dozen Tesla cars. Bearing in mind that a single launch has multiple small satellites in it, it is clear (assuming you believe Elon’s maths) that from a pure launch carbon consideration there are minimal concerns.

Elon Musk only has to sell 59 Teslas to offset the CO2 from a single SpaceX launch within a year

Has a through-lifecycle assessment of the environmental impact of the design, construction, launch and operation as well as deorbiting of a satellite or constellation of satellites been performed? It would be surprising if the launch itself were the major factor although it is the most visible one.

This lifecycle analysis also needs to include the end-of-life handling of satellites. In the case of microsats the expectation is that most will burn up as they fall out of orbit at end of life, but with lower orbits filling us with smaller satellites and legacy junk, there is an increasing need to launch large clean-up satellites which in turn come with their own carbon footprint.

As with many sustainability-realted topics there is more complexity than the original question might suggest...

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