Matt O'Brien

Associated Press

Today in Manufacturing Podcast

Today in Manufacturing Podcast

Today in Manufacturing has a new podcast brought to you by the editors of Industrial Media. In each episode, we discuss the five biggest stories in manufacturing, and the implications they have on the industry moving forward.

In this Sunday, March 13, 2016, file photo Anthony Bourdain speaks during South By Southwest at the Austin Convention Center, in Austin, Texas.

Why the Anthony Bourdain Voice Cloning Creeps People Out

It has renewed a debate about the future of voice-cloning technology

In this Sept. 16, 2015 file photo, West Salem police chief Charles Ashbeck flies his department's new drone in West Salem, Wis.

Gov't Use of Chinese Drones in Limbo

Lawmakers worry they could facilitate spying on critical infrastructure.

In this May 29, 2020 file photo, Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, speaks during a roundtable with industry executives about reopening country after the coronavirus closures, in the State Dining Room of the White House, in Washington. Microsoft has become the third big tech company this week to say it won’t sell its facial recognition software to police, following similar moves by Amazon and IBM. Smith, announced the decision and called for Congress to regulate the technology during a Washington Post video event on Thursday, June 11.

Microsoft Joins Amazon, IBM in Pausing Face Scans for Police

The tech giants are stepping back from systems criticized for incorrectly identifying people with darker skin.

In this April 21, 2020 file photo, a pumpjack is pictured as the sun sets in Oklahoma City. Google says it won’t build custom artificial intelligence tools for speeding up oil and gas extraction, taking an environmental stance that distinguishes it from cloud computing rivals Microsoft and Amazon. The announcement followed a Greenpeace report on Tuesday, May 19, that documents how the three tech giants are using AI and computing power to help oil companies find and access oil and gas deposits in the U.S. and around the world.

Google Backs Off Oil & Gas AI

The custom artificial intelligence tools would speed up oil and gas extraction.

This April 28, 2020, photo shows a smartphone app built for the state of Utah displaying coronavirus test sites. The app tracks symptoms and shares location data for contact tracing, the process of determining who might have been exposed to the virus. The app is “a tool to help jog the memory of the person who is positive so we can more readily identify where they’ve been, who they’ve been in contact with, if they choose to allow that,” said Angela Dunn, Utah’s state epidemiologist.

COVID-19 Tracking Is Having Some Issues

Among them are technical glitches and a general lack of interest.

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Apple, Google Team Up

They want to track down people who may have been infected by coronavirus carriers.

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The Joys of Working from Home

This massive, unplanned social experiment can strain productivity and domestic tranquility.

A man walks outside the Biogen Inc., headquarters, Wednesday, March 11, 2020, in Cambridge, Mass.

Coronavirus Cluster Tied to Biotech Meeting

It's a warning for employers who are still holding big gatherings as the outbreak spreads.

In this Dec. 20, 2019, file photo Defense Secretary Mark Esper speaks during a news conference at the Pentagon in Washington. The Pentagon is adopting new ethical principles as it prepares to accelerate its use of artificial intelligence technology on the battlefield.

Pentagon Adopts AI in War Ethical Principles

The new principles call for people to 'exercise appropriate levels of judgment and care.'

In this Thursday, Feb. 13, 2020 photo, Kyle Martin, a worker at HealthMap, a system using artificial intelligence to monitor global disease outbreaks, mines health data to keep the system up to date in a work area at Boston Children's Hospital in Boston. Early warnings of an emerging epidemic, some of them collected by HealthMap, showed AI's potential for giving global health experts a head start when bureaucratic hurdles and language barriers might get in the way. A screen behind displays a world map with colored dots marking cases of the disease known as COVID-19.

Can AI Flag Disease Outbreaks Faster Than Humans?

Judge Freezes Pentagon Contract

The company sued over the $10B military cloud contract, dubbed JEDI, that was awarded to a rival.