This Week’s BIG thing

Meta’s Apple moment

Meta’s annual Connect conference last week showcased exciting new products and features, spotlighting their commitment to hardware tech, a move many big tech players seem to be following. Here’s the rundown 👇

Orion AR Glasses Prototype

In a surprise move, Meta revealed the “Orion” prototype, their most advanced AR glasses yet. Using new holographic tech, these glasses project visuals directly in front of the user’s eyes via waveguides. They feature hand and eye tracking, and a neural interface on the wrist, hinting at Meta’s vision for the future of augmented reality.

The challenges

• High Production Costs: Each unit costs around $10,000 due to expensive materials, with silicon carbide subject to export restrictions.

• Limited Battery Life: Current prototypes offer only two hours of use, far below consumer expectations.

• Technical Hurdles: Balancing field of view, resolution, brightness, and cost remains a challenge.

• Size and Weight: Meta aims to reduce the thickness and weight to under 50 grams for all-day comfort.

•  Regulatory Compliance: Export restrictions and material regulations present additional hurdles.

What people are thinking

Most, including us are seriously impressed about how Meta have been able to pack so much punch in such form factor

Some are seeing the reveal as a sign that Meta have tempered their metaverse ambitions but view it as a positive more realistic pivot. Meta are cementing themselves as leaders in the AR space, potentially achieving what Google couldn’t with Google glass.

Few are concerned of its readiness for consumers, and that it has more of a developer kit feel to it, which is partly true as they are not for public use yet.

Other advancements

• Upgraded Ray-Ban Smart Glasses: NLP for easier voice commands, memory aids, multimodal AI for real-time video support, live language translations and other cosmetic enhancements

• Budget Quest 3S VR Headset: A more budget-friendly version of their popular Quest 3 virtual reality headset. Starting at $299 for the 128GB model and $399 for the 256GB model, coming Oct 15^th.

• Meta AI Upgrades and Llama 3.2: Meta AI now has multimodal AI, enhanced natural voice interactions, Photorealistic AI avatars and real-time voice dubbing

The rabbit hole 🐰

• _{Hear from Meta themselves} 🔗

• _{Why AR glasses?} 🔗

• _{Watch a hands-on demo of The AR glasses} 🔗

• _{The biggest announcements according to the Verge}

What’s new: Tech

OpenAI Faces Leadership Departures Amid Funding Round 🔗

OpenAI is experiencing significant leadership changes as key figures depart the company during a crucial funding round. Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati and Chief Research Officer Ilya Sutskever have both stepped down. Murati, known for her instrumental role in developing OpenAI's cutting-edge AI models, and Sutskever, a co-founder, leave as OpenAI works to secure additional capital. These leadership shifts may present challenges for the company’s ongoing projects, strategy, and future vision, particularly as OpenAI balances expanding AI capabilities with maintaining its ethical approach to development.

 Why It Matters
These high-profile departures occur at a critical time for OpenAI, which could signal internal tensions. The exits may be linked to recent organisational changes, including a push to give Sam Altman equity and remove OpenAI’s non-profit control structure, as discussed here. Additionally, ongoing concerns regarding OpenAI's safety committee, tasked with monitoring ethical risks, have been under scrutiny, with key members reportedly dissatisfied with the company’s direction read more. These developments may be reflective of broader disagreements over OpenAI’s future, potentially influencing these leadership changes.

For project delivery that rely heavily on AI innovations to enhance project delivery and productivity, the instability at OpenAI could lead to delays or shifts in product development, which might impact the broader AI landscape.

 The Rabbit Hole
Could these departures be connected to OpenAI's internal turmoil? Explore the potential link between leadership changes and OpenAI’s restructuring plan here, and read more about the safety committee concerns here. As OpenAI evolves, the industry will be watching closely.

💙 Other tech news we’re loving

• _{Microsoft AI screenshot tool returns, offering users enhanced screen-capturing functionality, improving productivity and seamless integration with Microsoft's AI-powered features after its initial removal.}

• _{Apple rejected the EU's AI pact, alongside Meta, despite support from 115 companies. This decision, as detailed here, may delay AI features for EU users, impacting competitiveness.}

• _{Notebook LM can now pull from YouTube, integrating audio and video sources into Google’s AI-powered note-taking tool, expanding its capabilities for researchers and creators alike.}

• _{Meta releases Llama 3.2, its latest AI model, which improves language processing and boosts performance for enterprise and research applications.}

• _{ChatGPT introduces an advanced voice feature, allowing users to interact more naturally with the AI, marking a major step forward in AI-powered communication.}

• _{OpenAI now allows inspection of their training data in response to legal challenges, providing more transparency in their data use, especially concerning copyright concerns.}

• _{Google releases new Gemini models, offering reduced pricing and enhanced performance, particularly boosting capabilities for developers working with generative AI.}

• _{Johnny Ive collaborates with OpenAI on new hardware designs, with additional details here, blending AI with hardware innovation for future products.}

• _{In Apple Intelligence leading the way for security, Bernard Marr explains how Apple’s AI is setting new standards for privacy, offering users enhanced data protection}.

What’s new: Projects

The huge collapse of ISG – the once construction giant

ISG, one of the UK’s largest construction firms, has collapsed into administration, marking the biggest failure in the industry since Carillion in 2018. Here’s a breakdown of what happened, why, and how data could have helped foresee and manage the risks.

On September 20, 2024, ISG filed for administration, halting operations across all sites. Over 2,000 jobs were lost, and 69 central government projects, including school and prison expansions, were left in limbo. ISG had been grappling with financial struggles, mainly due to loss-making contracts from 2018 to 2020, compounded by a failed sale attempt earlier in 2024.

Why it happened

It’s reported ISG’s downfall was caused by:

• Unprofitable Contracts: Between 2018 and 2020, ISG secured several loss-making contracts, particularly in residential, logistics, and data centres, which drained company liquidity.

• Failed Projects: High-profile failures, such as the £300 million Britishvolt contract and a £600 million Sunset Studios job, further eroded ISG’s financial standing.

• Cash Flow Problems: With liquidity under pressure, the company struggled to stay afloat.

• Diversification Challenges: ISG expanded into new regions and sectors, increasing costs without securing profitable returns.

• Economic Headwinds: Rising borrowing costs squeezed profit margins across the industry.

How could data have helped?

• Early Warning Systems: Data analytics could have flagged underperforming contracts earlier, allowing ISG to address issues before they became critical.

• Risk Assessment: Data-driven tools could have helped ISG evaluate the risks of new contracts more accurately, avoiding overly risky or unprofitable projects.

• Project Monitoring: Real-time analytics on costs and performance could have enabled ISG to intervene earlier in troubled projects, potentially saving them from spiraling losses.

• Supply Chain Insights: Data could have highlighted vulnerabilities within ISG’s supply chain, helping the company mitigate risks related to subcontractors and suppliers.

• Financial Forecasting: Sophisticated financial modeling might have provided clearer insights into ISG’s cash flow problems, prompting corrective actions sooner.

• Portfolio Optimisation: Data analysis could have guided ISG in balancing high-risk and high-reward projects, ensuring a more stable financial footing.

Why this matters to you 🫵

Particularly for those in construction, ISG’s collapse underscores the critical need for robust financial oversight within construction firms, it’s important to implement data-backed financial controls with a strategy for diversification. Loss-making contracts were critical to the downfall, and so smarter contract evaluations with a softer risk appetite is wise. The fallout from this event will likely be wide-reaching and prolonged creating turbulence in the industry, both directly in the supply chain but also indirectly across the broader built environment.

The rabbit hole 🐰

• What caused ISG’s downfall? 🔗

• How ISG’s collapse shows cracks in UK construction 🔗

• Leveraging data to manage project and construction risk 🔗

• 10 example of how data has been used in construction delivery 🔗

💙 Other Project news we’re loving

•  _{AI Improves Railway Safety by Detecting Defects AI technologies are helping the railway industry by automating the detection and monitoring of infrastructure defects, enhancing safety, and reducing maintenance costs, revolutionising traditional inspection processes.}

• _{Construction Industry Warms to Robotics and AI Adoption The construction industry is increasingly embracing robotics and AI for improved site productivity and efficiency. Read more on the adoption journey here, including challenges and benefits.}
  

What’s new: Productivity

“Superintelligence could be developed within 5 to 10 years” - Sam Altman

“...After thousands of years of compounding scientific discovery and technological progress, we have figured out how to melt sand, add some impurities, arrange it with astonishing precision at extraordinarily tiny scale into computer chips, run energy through it, and end up with systems capable of creating increasingly capable artificial intelligence.”

Sam Altman has his critics, but with every blog he releases, it creates a feeling of hope in artificial intelligence, and I guess a sense of trust in where we are going as a species. In his blog titled “The intelligence age” Sam places “massive prosperity” as the next milestone of AI, attributing this possibility to breakthroughs in deep learning. Here are our 5 key quotes from the blog:

Superintelligence could be developed within 5 to 10 years.

“It is possible that we will have superintelligence in a few thousand days”

Advanced infrastructure is the enabler for progress:

“We are more capable not because of genetic change, but because we benefit from the infrastructure of society being way smarter and more capable than any one of us; in an important sense, society itself is a form of advanced intelligence.”

Personal AI teams:

“Eventually we can each have a personal AI team, full of virtual experts in different areas, working together to create almost anything we can imagine.”

The power of deep learning:

“Deep learning worked...Humanity discovered an algorithm that could really, truly learn any distribution of data… the more compute and data available, the better it gets at helping people solve hard problems.”

Making AI accessible:

“If we want to put AI into the hands of as many people as possible, we need to drive down the cost of compute and make it abundant.”

The rabbit hole 🐰

• _{Sam’s blog} 🔗

• _{An excellent reading looking into when will AI outthink humans in terms of volume of thought} 🔗

💙 Other productivity news we’re loving

• _{"We recently renegotiated all our terms and conditions with our preferred law firms, and included a clause in our contract that they have to pass on savings they generate from generative AI." Sandrine Auffret, Chief Legal Counsel ASML}

• _{James Cameron joins Stability AI to bring his creative expertise to the board of directors, as discussed in thisannouncement, signalling a merging of AI and entertainment innovation.}

• _{In How You Become Irreplaceable In The Age Of AI, Bernard Marr explores strategies for remaining relevant in a world where AI is transforming industries and job roles.}

• _{A breakthrough in AI accuracy may signal The End of AI Hallucinations, providing data engineers with more reliable outputs and reducing misinformation in AI-generated content.}

Events

Beyond the Buzz: AI Meets the Real Estate Industry

Date: 30th October 2024
Time: 3:30 PM GMT

Join this insightful webinar, Beyond the Buzz: AI Meets the Real Estate Industry, where leading experts from property, finance, and technology will cut through the AI hype to reveal its practical applications. Featuring industry leaders like Daniel Fenton (Head of AI Platform, JLL), Paul O’Riordan (VP, Sage), Teana Baker-Taylor (COO, VeniceAI), and moderated by Sam Caulton (CFO, Re-Leased), this event will explore how AI can boost team productivity, transform property management, and improve tenant experiences.

Perfect for landlords, investors, property managers, finance teams, and anyone interested in AI's role in commercial real estate, this webinar will provide valuable insights on leveraging AI for growth, security, and innovation.

Register now to secure your spot: AI Meets the Real Estate Industry.

Project Flux Podcast

Podcast of the Week: Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast, and AI for Lunch?

This week, business and performance coach Philip Crocker discusses the critical role of human connection in workplace performance, the evolution of OKRs in the AI era, and AI’s limitations in leadership and meta-cognition. Explore how human strengths complement AI’s role in modern business.

One More Thing

Zuckerberg's Bold Bet: The Endless Rise of AI Systems

Mark Zuckerberg says he is betting that the limit of scaling AI systems "is not going to happen any time soon", as Llama 4 will train on 100,000+ GPUs and Llama 5 even more than that
byu/Gothsim10 insingularity

Meet Project Flux: About Us

At Project Flux, we're committed to pioneering the future of construction and project delivery through the lens of cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence insights. Our vision is to be at the forefront of integrating AI into the fabric of project delivery, transforming how projects are conceptualised, planned, and executed.

Our Mission Project Flux aims to not only inform and educate but also to inspire professionals in the construction industry to embrace the transformative potential of AI. We believe in the power of AI to revolutionise project delivery, making it more efficient, predictive, and adaptable to the dynamic demands of the modern world.

What We Offer Through our insightful newsletters, podcasts and curated content on LinkedIn, and engaging discussions, Project Flux serves as a resource for professionals seeking to stay ahead in their field. We offer a blend of practical advice, thought leadership, and the latest developments in AI and construction technology.

What People Say…