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The production problems Tesla has faced with its Model 3 have been well documented. Now, sources say the company is facing similar issues with its solar roof tile initiative. According to Reuters, former and current employees have revealed that assembly line problems, plus CEO Elon Musk’s exacting aesthetic demands, has delayed production, causing tension with partner Panasonic, and rattling officials that are keen to see a return on significant state investment.

The “Solar Roof,” produced at Tesla’s factory in Buffalo, New York, is designed to look like and function as a regular roof while also generating energy. According to sources, technical challenges have delayed production, as has Musk’s design plans. Speaking to Reuters, one source said that “Aesthetic look is the key point that Elon is not always satisfied with. That’s the big issue.”

Neither Tesla nor Reuters’ sources have revealed current production figures for the roof tiles, but the delays are such that Panasonic — which the initiative depends on for solar components — has been forced to find other buyers for the parts it had built to sell to Tesla. According to a former Panasonic employee, the company has been shipping “large volumes” of its photovoltaic cells as samples to other prospective buyers, due to low demand from Tesla. Panasonic declined to comment on the issue, stating only that it “believes Tesla will use Panasonic cells when it mass-markets the Solar roof.”

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This video was made possible by Brilliant. Be one of the first 200 people to sign up with this link and get 20% off your premium subscription with Brilliant.org! https://brilliant.org/singularity

Artificial intelligence has been a topic of growing prominence in the media and mainstream culture since 2015, as well as in the investment world, with start-ups that even mention the word in their business model, gaining massive amounts of funding.

While to many, the hype around AI may appear sudden, the concepts of modern artificial intelligence have been around for over a century and extending further, the concept of artificial intelligence and artificial beings have been in the minds of humans for thousands of years.

To better understand and appreciate this technology and those who brought it to us as well as to gain insight into where it will take us: sit back, relax and join me in an exploration on the history of artificial intelligence.

Thank you to the patron(s) who supported this video ➤

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AI is a buzzword that gets tossed around often in the business world and in the media, but it is already having tangible effects for a slew of industries — not least those that rely on a significant amount of manual labor.

As AI comes increasingly closer to maturity, and businesses continue to ramp up investments in it, some worry that not enough attention is being paid to the broader social and moral implications of the technology.

CNBC spoke with some experts to see what they think are the five scariest potential future scenarios for AI.

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845 pages in length, the report aims to outline the history, present state and future of the Longevity Industry in the United Kingdom, profiling hundreds of companies, investors, and trends, and offering guidance on the most optimal ways in which UK longevity industry stakeholders, as well as government officials, can work to strengthen the industry, and allow it to reach its full potential as a global longevity science and preventive medicine hub. The report uses comprehensive infographics to distill the report’s data and conclusions into easily understandable portions, and interested readers can get a quick understanding of the report’s main findings and conclusions in its 10-page executive summary.

This special regional case study follows-up on the content and general outline of the Longevity Industry made by our consortium in the previous Longevity Industry Landscape Overviews, including Volume I “The Science of Longevity” (750 pages), and Volume II “The Business of Longevity” (650 pages), published earlier this year.

These ongoing analytical reports are part of a collaborative project by The Global Longevity Consortium, consisting of the Biogerontology Research Foundation, Deep Knowledge Analytics, Aging Analytics Agency and the Longevity. International platform.

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Join us at Navy Pier in Chicago on August 24th & 25th in bringing the LEADERS in blockchain, government, and business together with the VOICES to learn what is possible from the BUILDERS. 50+ Leaders (Speakers) 100+ Voices (Bloggers, Podcasters, Youtubers) 250+ Builders (Blockchain Projects) 5,000 Attendees.

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An ambitious smart-city project spearheaded by Alphabet subsidiary Sidewalk Labs has run into local resistance, causing delays.

The backstory: Waterfront Toronto, a development agency founded by the Canadian government, partnered with the Google sister company in October 2017 to create a futuristic neighborhood on the Toronto waterfront. Sidewalk Labs plans to fill the 12-acre plot with driverless shuttle buses, garbage-toting robots, and other gadgets to show how emerging technologies can improve city life.

The problem: Sidewalk Labs’ connection to Google and vague descriptions of its business model alarmed privacy advocates and urban planners from the start. Local pushback has increased since, causing a key supporter to resign from the project and delaying the release of its final development plan to spring 2019.

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LG will build its next artificial intelligence (AI) research lab in Toronto, it announced Wednesday.

The South Korean electronics company said the Canadian lab is an extension of its newly expanded Silicon Valley AI Lab in Santa Clara, California. It also has AI labs in South Korea, India and Russia.

“Early implementations of AI in connected devices today are setting the stage for tomorrow’s smart cities, smart homes, smart businesses and smart devices, all with capabilities that no one has even dreamed of yet.” said LG President and Chief Technology Officer Il-pyung Park.

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The energy-generating potential of solar panels – and a key limitation on their use – is a result of what they’re made of. Panels made of silicon are declining in price such that in some locations they can provide electricity that costs about the same as power from fossil fuels like coal and natural gas. But silicon solar panels are also bulky, rigid and brittle, so they can’t be used just anywhere.

In many parts of the world that don’t have regular electricity, solar panels could provide reading light after dark and energy to pump drinking water, help power small household or village-based businesses or even serve emergency shelters and refugee encampments. But the mechanical fragility, heaviness and transportation difficulties of silicon solar panels suggest that silicon may not be ideal.

Building on others’ work, my research group is working to develop flexible solar panels, which would be as efficient as a silicon panel, but would be thin, lightweight and bendable. This sort of device, which we call a “solar tarp,” could be spread out to the size of a room and generate electricity from the sun, and it could be balled up to be the size of a grapefruit and stuffed in a backpack as many as 1,000 times without breaking. While there has been some effort to make organic solar cells more flexible simply by making them ultra-thin, real durability requires a molecular structure that makes the solar panels stretchable and tough.

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New solar energy research from Arizona State University demonstrates that silicon-based, tandem photovoltaic modules, which convert sunlight to electricity with higher efficiency than present modules, will become increasingly attractive in the U.S.

A paper that explores the vs. enhanced efficiency of a new solar technology, titled “Techno-economic viability of silicon-based, tandem modules in the United States,” appears in Nature Energy this week. The paper is authored by ASU Fulton Schools of Engineering, Assistant Research Professor Zhengshan J. Yu, Graduate Student Joe V. Carpenter and Assistant Professor Zachary Holman.

The Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative was launched in 2011 with a goal of making solar cost-competitive with conventional energy sources by 2020. The program attained its goal of $0.06 per kilowatt-hour three years early and a new target of $0.03 per kilowatt-hour by 2030 has been set. Increasing the efficiency of photovoltaic modules is one route to reducing the cost of the solar electricity to this new target. If reached, the goal is expected to triple the amount of solar installed in the U.S. in 2030 compared to the business-as-usual scenario.

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