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Co-CEOs take the helm at KinectAir digital travel service

Parked plane with KinectAir livery
KinectAir makes use of private aircraft including this Pilatus PC-12 plane. (KinectAir Photo via Business Wire)

Retired Air Force Col. Katie Buss and tech entrepreneur Ben Howard have taken the helm as co-CEOs of Vancouver, Wash.-based KinectAir, which provides a digital platform for booking on-demand private air travel.

Buss previously served as KinectAir’s chief operating officer. Howard, who co-founded the privately held company in 2019, was chief technology officer before his promotion. Fellow co-founder Jonathan Evans is leaving the CEO post but continues to serve as KinectAir’s board chair.

The new management arrangement aims to facilitate scaled-up operations at KinectAir. As co-CEO for aviation, Buss will focus on the aviation sector and industry relationships as well as safety and regulatory issues. As co-CEO for technology, Howard will advance the company’s AI-powered app and operating system to connect vetted flight operators and passengers nationwide.

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GeekWire

Helijet plans to buy electric air taxis for B.C. flights

Illustration: Helijet eVTOL with Vancouver skyline in background
Helijet is due to operate Beta Technologies’ Alia aircraft in British Columbia in the late 2020s. (Helijet Illustration)

Vancouver, B.C.-based Helijet International has placed firm orders with Vermont-based Beta Technologies for a fleet of electric-powered vertical-takeoff-and-landing aircraft, or eVTOLs.

The aircraft, popularly known as flying taxis, are currently slated to undergo commercial regulatory certification in 2026 and would be available for commercial service shortly thereafter, Helijet said in a news release.

Beta Technologies’ Alia eVTOLs are built to carry a pilot and up to five passengers. The aircraft would be integrated into Helijet’s existing helicopter flight network, focusing on scheduled service between Vancouver, Victoria and Nanaimo. They’d also be used for emergency response, air ambulance and organ transfer services in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland, plus charter services for rural and remote communities.

The Alia orders were announced today at Helijet’s Victoria Harbour Heliport, with B.C. Premier David Eby in attendance.

“We are committed to introducing and integrating zero-emission, vertical-lift technologies and related ground/building infrastructure in the communities we serve, and look forward to transforming our current heliport infrastructure to meet future urban air mobility vertiport standards,” said Danny Sitnam, Helijet’s president and CEO.

Eby said Helijet’s move into the eVTOL market is consistent with British Columbia’s commitment to promoting sustainable aviation technology and infrastructure development.

“This provincial government recognizes the potential of advanced air mobility to decarbonize the aviation sector, improve regional connectivity, improve emergency response times and introduce new manufacturing opportunities in our province,” Eby said.

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GeekWire

Zeno wins $7.5M contract for underwater nuclear power

Illustration: Radioisotope power system on seafloor
An artist’s conception shows Zeno’s radioisotope power system on the seafloor. (Zeno Power Illustration)

Zeno Power says it’s been awarded a $7.5 million contract from the Department of Defense to build and demonstrate a radioisotope power system that can provide distributed power on the seabed.

The program, funded through the Pentagon’s Operational Energy Innovation Office and the Office of Naval Research, calls for the demonstration to take place by 2025.

Zeno maintains offices in Seattle as well as Washington, D.C., and one of its partners in the program is Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture, which is headquartered in Kent, Wash.

The objective of the program — known as Distributed Energy Provided Throughout the Seas, or DEPTHS — is to develop decentralized nodes for energy generation and distribution on the seabed. Such a system could open the way for long-endurance seafloor sensor systems and charging stations for autonomous undersea vehicles.

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GeekWire

Zeno Power tests a new type of nuclear heat source

PNNL team removes heat source from transfer port
Team members at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory remove Zeno Power's heat source from a transfer port. (Zeno Power Photo)

Zeno Power says it has successfully completed its first demonstration of a new type of radioisotope heat source that could be used to generate off-grid power in settings ranging from the bottom of the ocean to the surface of the moon.

The demonstration — performed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. — took advantage of the energy provided by the radioactive decay of strontium-90. Zeno said its tests confirmed that the company’s technology can increase the specific power of its heat source compared with previously available strontium-90 heat sources.

Zeno uses radioisotope heat sources as the building blocks for its power-generating systems, which are designed to convert constant thermal energy into electricity. Strontium-90, which is typically created as a byproduct of nuclear fission, is an abundant fuel for such systems — but existing strontium-based power systems tend to be bulky. Zeno’s design could generate more power with less bulk, opening the way for a wider range of applications.

The work at PNNL involved radioactive and non-radioactive activities, including chemical processing and fuel fabrication, materials handling and heat source characterization. The test data will support further development of heat sources.

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GeekWire

AI-savvy writers do a reality check on techno-optimism

Ted Chiang at GeekWire Summit
Science-fiction writer Ted Chiang speaks at the 2023 GeekWire Summit in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)

How will “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” venture capitalist Marc Andreessen’s paean to economic growth and artificial intelligence, play to a wider audience? The reviews are in from two award-winning writers who are familiar with the impact of generative AI on creative professions.

“I think it’s mostly nonsense,” science-fiction writer Ted Chiang said Oct. 19 at the GeekWire Summit in Seattle.

Chiang, a longtime Seattle-area resident, is best-known as the author of “Story of Your Life,” the novella that was adapted for the Oscar-nominated 2016 movie “Arrival.” But he’s also won acclaim as a commentator on AI’s effects for The New Yorker and other publications. Last month, Time magazine included Chiang among the 100 most influential people in AI.

The other writer on the SIFF Cinema stage was Eric Heisserer, the screenwriter who turned Chiang’s story into the script for “Arrival.” Heisserer witnessed the debate over generative AI and the future of work up close as a member of the negotiating committee for the Writers Guild of America during its recent strike against Hollywood studios.

Both Chiang and Heisserer say AI is too often unjustly portrayed as a high-tech panacea. That claim came through loud and clear in Andreessen’s manifesto, which called AI a “universal problem solver.”

“Technology can solve certain problems, but I think the biggest problems that we face are not problems that have technological solutions,” Chiang said in response. “Climate change probably does not have a technological solution. Wealth inequality does not have a technological solution. Most of these are problems of political will. … And so Marc Andreessen’s manifesto is a prime example of ignoring all of these other realities.”

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GeekWire

Neurophos raises $7M to create exotic chips for AI

Neurophos co-founder Andrew Traverso in optics lab
Neurophos co-founder Andrew Traverso works on an optics experiment in the lab. (Neurophos Photo)

A semi-stealthy startup called Neurophos says it’s raised $7 million in seed funding to support the development of a chip that makes use of metamaterials for heavy-duty AI applications. And although the company’s HQ is in Austin, Texas, it has plenty of connections to Seattle-area tech leaders.

Founded in 2020, Neurophos was one of the first companies to receive pre-seed support from MetaVC Partners, a metamaterials-centric venture fund backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and former Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold. Neurophos’ co-founder and CEO, Patrick Bowen, previously contributed his expertise to Seattle-area metamaterials ventures such as Kymeta and Lumotive.

Tom Driscoll — the founder and chief technology officer of yet another Gates-backed metamaterials venture, Kirkland, Wash.-based Echodyne — is listed on Neurophos’ website as its CTO and co-founder. Kymeta’s former CEO, Nathan Kundtz, is listed as a board member.

The aforementioned ventures all rely on the exotic properties of metamaterials — electronic arrays that are structured to bend light in a variety of wavelengths, in a variety of ways, without the need for moving parts. Bowen told me that such properties could reduce the size and the energy requirements for photonic chips that could be tailor-made for artificial intelligence platforms like ChatGPT.

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Fiction Science Club

‘The Creator’: Get a reality check on AI at the movies

Madeleine Yuna Voyles as an android in "The Creator"
Madeleine Yuna Voyles plays a childlike android with strange powers in "The Creator." (© 2023 20th Century Studios)

Over the next 50 years, will humanity become too attached to the artificial-intelligence agents that dictate the course of our lives? Or is forming a deep attachment the only way we’ll survive?

Those are the sorts of questions raised by “The Creator,” Hollywood’s latest take on the potential for a robo-apocalypse. It’s a subject that has inspired a string of Terminator and Matrix movies as well as real-world warnings from the likes of Elon Musk and the late Stephen Hawking.

How close does “The Creator” come to the truth about AI’s promise and peril? We conducted a reality check with a panel of critics who are familiar with AI research and the ways in which that research percolates into popular culture. Their musings are the stuff of the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast.

Semi-spoiler alert: We’ve tried to avoid giving away any major plot points, but if you’re obsessive about spoilers, turn away now — and come back after you’ve seen “The Creator.”

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Fiction Science Club

Supervillain tale takes aim at today’s tech titans

Blended image of Dr. Evil from "Austin Powers" movie and cover art from "Starter Villain"
"Starter Villain" blends Dr. Evil-like characters with intelligent cats. Credits: New Line Cinema (left); Tristan Elwell for Tor Books (right)

There’s nary a mention of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates in “Starter Villain,” but science-fiction author John Scalzi’s wickedly funny novel finds ways to skewer the tech billionaires who rule our world without dropping names.

Scalzi lays out a scenario in which supervillains are basically the CEOs of companies that do dastardly deeds as a service.

“The point of the supervillainy is not to hide, but to offer products and services that offer value to your clients, who just happen to be, you know, the United States or China, or some major corporation — so that the supervillainy that you do is not seen as outside the pale of standard business practices,” he explains.

If that sounds like today’s billionaire tech disrupters, so be it.

“I will say that the bad behavior of billionaires in 2023 makes this book far more timely than it might otherwise have been,” Scalzi admits in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. “I wrote this about 18 months ago, so we had no idea that several of the world’s biggest billionaires would just be like, ‘Mask off, I’m actually a terrible person!'”

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GeekWire

Augmented-reality training system aces flight test

Augmented-reality view of virtual fighter jet
A computer-generated image of a fighter jet shows up on augmented-reality glasses. (Boeing Photo)

Boeing and an augmented-reality company called Red 6 have successfully flown and tested a virtual display system in a TA-4J Skyhawk tactical aircraft, in preparation for putting the system on a T-7 advanced training jet.

The system lets pilots see and interact with virtual aircraft, targets and threats on the ground and in the air, while also experiencing the stresses that come with physically flying their airplane. The idea is to provide pilots with a realistic training environment while minimizing the risks of getting hurt.

“Boeing is the first company to team with Red 6 on this type of advanced training technology,” Donn Yates, executive director of Boeing Air Force Fighters and Trainers Business Development, said today in a news release. “The successful series of ground tests and four flight sorties illustrate our collaborative ability to rapidly integrate, deliver and test new technology with the potential to change fighter pilot training for an entire generation.”

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How satellites and AI work together to monitor the planet

Screengrab of global imagery map from Satlas
Satlas’ AI modeling software improves satellite image resolution by a factor of four. (AI2 / Satlas Image)

Geospatial data analysis promises to revolutionize the way agriculture, urban planning and disaster relief is done — and thanks to a variety of projects that make use of artificial intelligence, Microsoft and Seattle’s Allen Institute for AI are part of that revolution.

The Allen Institute for AI, also known as AI2, recently rolled out Satlas, a new software platform for exploring global geospatial data generated from satellite imagery. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab is working with public and private institutions in Colombia on Project Guacamaya, which uses AI tools to monitor and understand conditions in the Amazon Rainforest.

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