Griffin on Tech: Nuclear ambitions, Zuck’s goggles, and #WFH

Having just returned from a couple of weeks in the San Francisco Bay Area to news of more job losses and a spirited debate about return-to-office mandates, it’s been interesting to compare and contrast how our little country is tracking as we race towards 2025.

The vibe in the US at the moment seemed buoyant with the economy doing reasonably well, undercut by a sense of apprehension at the looming presidential election and what a return to a Trump administration would mean for everything from global geopolitics to immigration, to the economy.

San Francisco had cleaned itself up considerably since I was there a couple of years ago. Homelessness and crime still plague the city, but now you have go several blocks back from Union Square to see signs of it. 

The Economic Intelligence Unit expects the US economy to slow next year.

“Cracks are starting to emerge and we forecast a slowdown going into 2025, predominantly driven by a cooling labour market and high interest rates taking its toll,” it predicted this week. 

The cracks emerged here long ago and small wins like this week’s trade deal with Saudi Arabia can’t disguise the fact that our economy just isn’t diverse enough to deliver the high-value jobs and exports we need to thrive as a small advanced nation. Doubling down on innovation, and knowledge economy industries is part of the answer to that, but our capacity to do so is greatly reduced by the job losses in our science system and the scaling back of tech initiatives to boost skills and stimulate R&D.

US companies are preparing for the tougher times we already face, and one way that is manifesting itself is in a hardening attitude to flexible working. Many people I spoke to in the tech sector were now back in the office the majority of the week, mirroring the edict given to government department heads this week to get their people back into the office to a greater degree.

You want productivity, we want empathy

Let’s face it, employers have more leverage following waves of redundancies, particularly pronounced in the US tech sector over the last two years. But a desire to boost productivity through face-to-face collaboration could backfire, because the research shows that what workers want more than anything is flexibility, the autonomy to decide when and where they want to work.

HP published its second Work Relationship Index this week, a survey of nearly 16,000 information workers around the world, which found that just 28% of them considered they had a “healthy” relationship with work. 

I don’t think forcing more of them back into the daily grind of commuting is going to improve that situation in any country. Workers surveyed also said they highly valued emotional intelligence and empathy in their corporate leaders but saw evidence of it too rarely. Maybe if bosses focus on developing a healthier culture that prioritises how work is done rather than where, the much sought-after productivity gains would be achieved.

Those who had been given access to AI tools were also more productive and satisfied in their work as they could use them to cut down on the mundane paperwork that goes with toiling in the knowledge economy.

It suggests a digital divide is emerging in workplaces between those given access to AI tools and those deemed not to require it to do their job. The tech sector is busy embracing artificial intelligence - there wasn’t a product briefing or press conference I attended which didn’t mention it. 

The mantra was that if you aren’t maximising your use of AI, you’ll be at a competitive disadvantage. But still, the gap between spending on AI in the form of expensive Nvidia GPUs and the tangible economic impacts of AI remains. I had a lot of conversations about accelerating building of nuclear power stations to shore up the electricity supply for the data centres that will consume ever more power to run AI applications. 

Three Mile Island lives again

This week, Microsoft announced a deal with the operator of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant which partially melted down in 1979, to reactivate the plant. Microsoft will purchase the entire output from it to power its data centres for the next 20 years. Many techie types I talked to expected a flurry of compact nuclear reactors to be built over the next decade to power data centres running AI workloads.

One tech company that pivoted away from AI briefly this week to talk about something else was Meta, with the debut of Orion, its augmented reality glasses. From initial descriptions by journalists who tried them on yesterday, they are very good.

“In one day, Mark Zuckerberg just made Apple's US$3,500 headset look obsolete with the Meta Orion prototype AR glasses,” review site Tom’s Guide reported. Not that the Apple Vision Pro was selling like hotcakes, but Zuckerburg seems to be closer than ever to realising the initial vision that Google originally had with its ill-fated augmented glasses - a lightweight pair of specs that are comfortable to wear, easy to control and which overlay digital content on the real world. After the billions spent building the metaverse and failing to inspire anyone with the results, Meta seems to have the genesis of a more tangible hit on its hands, though it will be several years before they are ready for prime time.

RIP Helen Baxter

Finally, I was shocked and saddened to hear this week of the passing of Helen Baxter, tech commentator, and the creative force alongside her husband Chelfyn at Wellington-based creative agency Mohawk Media. I first met Helen over 20 years ago when I interviewed her as a Herald reporter about her enthusiastic adoption of remote working.

Helen was well-known around the tech sector, did a lot of great work for companies and government agencies alike, and had a gift for science communication. The last time I saw her, several months ago at a Creative HQ event, she was brimming with ideas and in networking mode, introducing me to bright young start-up founders.

So long Helen. Thanks for inspiring and supporting me and so many others with your generous spirit, brilliant mind, and passion for all things science and tech.