Easily overblown, little-understood, and dangerous: Why we need to understand political microtargeting
Isobel Asher Hamilton
Oct 4, 2020
  

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg leaving The Merrion Hotel in Dublin after a meeting with politicians to discuss regulation of social media and harmful content in April 2019. Niall Carson/PA Images via Getty Images

We learned this week that the Trump campaign may have tried to dissuade millions of Black voters from voting in 2016 through highly targeted online ads.

The investigation, by Channel 4, highlighted a still little-understood online advertising technique, microtargeting.

This targets ads at people based on the huge amount of data available about them online.

Experts say Big Tech needs to be much more transparent about how microtargeting works, to avoid overblown claims but also counter a potential threat to democracy.


The Trump campaign in 2016 used online ads to try and dissuade Black voters from voting, according to an investigation this week by UK broadcaster Channel 4.

A cache of documents obtained by Channel 4 included a database of some 200 million Americans' Facebook accounts, broken down into characteristics like race, gender, and even conclusions about their personalities.

The database was split into different groups and one group, unsubtly labelled "deterrence," was disproportionately made up of Black users. The idea was to use tailored online ads on platforms like Facebook to dissuade this group from heading to the ballot box. (The Trump campaign has denied this report.)

Trying to sway voters through advertising is not new, but Channel 4's investigation was a reminder of how the Trump campaign made use of a still little-understood type of advertising called microtargeting.


Microtargeting involves using the huge amounts of data consumers give away online about who they are friends with and what they like to target ads at them.

While microtargeting has long been part of what makes the likes of Facebook and Google so profitable, it really came under mainstream scrutiny in 2018 during the data leak involving political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.

Per investigations by The Observer in 2018, Cambridge Analytica used data to build up "psychographic profiles" of people in order to more accurately target them with political ads.

According to Channel 4's investigation this week, Cambridge Analytica was behind the 2016 ads targeting Black voters in Georgia.


And yet experts warn that while microtargeting is troubling, imputing the technology with mysterious abilities to persuade vast numbers of voters may be a distraction from real voter suppression. Ultimately, we need to understand the technology better.
Concerns about microtargeting could be overblown

The very broad strokes of how microtargeting works go like this: Your behavior online generates a wealth of data about what you are like.

This data is analysed by companies to try and draw as many conclusions about you as possible and build up a profile, from basic demographic details like your age right down to subjective things like your personality type.

When advertisers place ads on social media platforms they are able to tailor the intended audience for these ads according to these much finer details. The sell is vast scale and speed.


Felix Simon, a communications expert at the Oxford Internet Institute, told Business Insider that too often media reports on political campaigns using microtargeting take it as read their tactics have been successful in changing people's minds.

Although the Channel 4 documentary rightly pointed out that voter turnout among Black people fell in the districts where the Trump campaign deployed its "deterrence" campaign, Simon said this could be down to correlation rather than causation.

"I think what we see here is first and foremost a form of negative advertising which has a long and dirty history and can have voter suppression as one of its aims," he said. "But that it actually works (and on such a scale as suggested here) is highly doubtful and — based on everything we know about targeted advertising and attempts at persuasion — most likely pales in comparison to very real voter suppression efforts, which include removing polling stations, gerrymandering, or restrictive voting laws."

Simon is broadly skeptical of the so-called "psychographic" microtargeting employed by Cambridge Analytica — i.e. trying to use people's data to make conclusions about their personality and target them accordingly. He believes the media has, in some ways, fallen for these firms' own hype.


"It's [presented as] this almost magical technology which promises so much and which is heavily pushed by the industry in this, which is all these digital campaigning companies and the political data analytics industry. And they make all these big promises," he said.

Dr. Tom Dobber, an expert in political communication at the University of Amsterdam, agreed that the Channel 4 report did not prove the Trump campaign's attempt to influence Black voters had been a success. More generally he does believe microtargeting can be effective — but its efficacy can be blown out of proportion.

"While the effects are reasonably strong, they should not be overestimated. It's not like you can get a staunch Conservative to vote for Labour if you microtarget him long enough. Rather, citizens who are not already set on a party are susceptible and it seems that microtargeting ads is more effective than using untargeted ads," he told Business Insider.
Microtargeting might not be inherently bad

Dobber said the granular nature microtargeting has the potential to be both advantageous and dangerous for democracy.


"There are clear downsides as well as upsides, e.g. sending relevant information to inactive citizens might activate them," he said. "Microtargeting can increase turnout. These are generally good things. But there is clear potential for manipulation and also potential for the amplification of disinformation."

He added: "I suppose it can be used for good when actors operate in good faith, but microtargeting can just as easily be detrimental for society when used in bad faith."

Jamal Watkins, vice president for the NAACP, told Channel 4 that the use of microtargeting to systematically disenfranchise voters was a disturbing part of the documentary's findings.

"We use similar voter file data, but it's to motivate, persuade, encourage folks to participate. We don't actually use the data to say 'who can we deter and keep at home.' That seems fundamentally it's a shift from the notion of democracy," said Watkins.


Part of the problem here is that microtargeting is a new and largely unregulated market, so platforms like Facebook are not beholden to an industry standard for how they decide which ads are are allowed to appear on their platform. Facebook has broadly said it will not fact-check or constrain political speech in ads even if it is demonstrably untrue, although there have been some exceptions.

Tech platforms have also only provided restricted amounts of data to researchers like Simon and Dobber.

"It would be helpful if the large social platforms would give more information about which article is targeted to which groups, on the basis of what data, tailored to which characteristics. Now, social platforms only provide rough estimations on only a few large categories," Dobber said.
Even if it's useless, it's dangerous

To Felix Simon, even if microtargeting is ineffective it poses a potential threat to individuals' privacy because for it to be an economically viable product it requires massive amounts of data, which can in turn be sold for other purposes.


"I think the problem is it's not just used for that [microtargeting]," he said. "Think of a scenario where the personal information they have about you, which could be everything in the US down from the way you vote to where you live, how much you earn, how much you spend on what things, and then that is being used in a context you definitely don't want it to be used, for instance to set the rate of your health insurance," he said.

"That for me is more important, because from what we know there is a lot of shady stuff going on with data being sold without [people's] knowledge, potentially to people we don't want to have our personal data," added Simon.

Leaked emails show a high-profile engineer left Amazon after filing sexual harassment claims to HR in 2018. Now she's speaking out about what she calls a 'toxic' work culture for women.

Eugene Kim Oct 3, 2020

NVIDIA's director of research Anima Anandkumar Reuters/Han jingyu

Anima Anandkumar, a former executive of the Amazon Web Services cloud unit, submitted multiple sexual harassment claims before she left the company in 2018.

Amazon ultimately investigated the matter and found the claims weren't substantiated, and the person she accused of bullying and using sexist language has been promoted since then.

Anandkumar is now speaking out about what she calls a "harassment culture" at Amazon, saying in a series of tweets over the weekend that women feel "helpless" at the company.

Anandkumar is a high-profile engineer in the machine learning space, and has a history of speaking out against gender issues, as she did to help change the name of the artificial conference NIPS to NeurIPS over the former name's sexual connotations.

Anandkumar's allegations are the latest in a series of controversies that highlight Amazon's male-dominated work culture.

Several employees tell Business Insider that the lack of women in the upper ranks is "demoralizing" and shared incidents where they felt they faced sexual discrimination.

A high-profile Amazon executive filed multiple sexual harassment complaints to the company's HR department in 2018 against a male manager before ultimately leaving the company that same year. An in-house investigation did not substantiate her claims, but the former employee is now calling on the company to fix its "harassment culture" — and lift the confidentiality obligations imposed on current and former employees' ability to publicly talk about sexual harassment allegations.

Anima Anandkumar, a principal scientist formerly at the Amazon Web Services cloud unit, made repeated claims of her male colleague verbally and physically threatening her at work, according to internal emails obtained by Business Insider.

Her harassment complaints, filed in early 2018, resulted in an internal investigation led by the human resources department. Swami Sivasubramanian, VP of Amazon AI, also directly responded to some of the claims, according to emails. But the senior male colleague who she accused of bullying and making sexist remarks didn't face any serious consequences, remains at the company, and has been promoted since then, according to internal emails and people familiar with the matter.

Sivasubramanian, a senior executive in charge of running AWS's artificial intelligence team, initially told Anandkumar at the time of the 2018 complaints that he was "quite unhappy" about the male colleague's alleged behavior and he would provide him "aggressive feedback," according to the emails.

Now, Anandkumar, who is currently a director of machine learning research at Nvidia and a computer science professor at Caltech, is speaking out about the sexist work environment she says she saw at Amazon.

In a series of tweets last week, Anandkumar said Amazon has a "toxic work culture" that makes female employees feel "helpless" at work. She said that her "harasser" continues to work at Amazon and was even promoted shortly after she filed her complaints.

"No longer will I be silent about toxic work culture at @awscloud Every woman in my org has since left. Multiple women filed harassment along with me. Nothing happened," Anandkumar tweeted last week.

The bigger goal of Anandkumar's tweets appears to be aimed at making Amazon lift the non-disclosure agreements over personal harassment cases. Alphabet, for example, announced last week it would loosen the NDA restrictions that prevent its employees from publicly discussing sexual harassment claims.

"Sadly @awscloud is a toxic place for #WomenInSTEM Please fix it. Ban NDAs. Make actions taken transparent. #MeToo," she tweeted.
—Prof. Anima Anandkumar (@AnimaAnandkumar) September 26, 2020

The newly public callout by Anandkumar sheds even more light on the male-dominated work culture at Amazon that has come under fire in recent years.

Amazon Studios chief Roy Price stepped down in 2017 following sexual harassment charges, while CEO Jeff Bezos has faced frequent criticism, both internally and externally, for the lack of gender diversity in the company's upper ranks. According to the company's latest figures, men accounted for 72.5% of all global managerial positions at Amazon.

The allegations also come at a time when the broader tech industry is grappling with its macho image, punctuated by recent controversies at companies like Google and Uber. Just last week, Google's parent company Alphabet settled a shareholder lawsuit over sexual harassment cases, and announced sweeping changes over the way it treats sexual discrimination charges.

In an email to Business Insider, Amazon's spokesperson denied Anandkumar's claims, saying the company's investigation found her allegations to be meritless.

"At the time these allegations were raised, Amazon HR conducted a thorough investigation and concluded that the facts did not support the vast majority of Ms. Anandkumar's claims, including the most serious allegations. Multiple witnesses directly refuted Ms. Anandkumar's allegations and in other cases, evidence in email and other records demonstrated that certain claims were simply false," the spokesperson said in a statement.

Sivasubramanian didn't respond to a request for comment.

After the publication of this story, Anandkumar sent the following statement disputing Amazon's findings:

"[Amazon's] HR had a vested interest in protecting my harasser because AWS valued his 100k+ citations in AI more than healthy work culture. The outcome of the investigation was pre-determined. They initially promised me an outside independent investigator would be assigned and that was a lie. They said witnesses I provided were ineligible because they were disgruntled former employees (no evidence whatsoever for that). I told HR that I was traumatized by his physical intimidation and did not clearly recall all of the exact dates and times it happened. They used it against me. His history of physical intimidation is well known in the AI community and they refused to use any of that information."

Amazon's spokesperson denies her claims again in an email to Business Insider:

"Anandkumar's additional claims provided in her statement are false. HR approached this investigation independently and with an unbiased perspective. We value all of our employees, and work hard to foster a culture where inclusion is the norm for each and every one of our 800,000+ employees. We do not tolerate any kind of discrimination in the workplace. We do not tolerate any kind of harassment in the workplace, and always vigorously investigate all claims reported by employees to Amazon Human Resources."
'Need protection'

Anandkumar is a high-profile engineer in the machine learning space, and has often made public speeches about artificial intelligence, including at the TEDx Talks conference. She also has a history of driving change by speaking out against gender issues in tech. In 2018, she was one of the leading voices that helped change the name of NIPS, a prominent artificial intelligence conference, to NeurIPS, citing the former title's sexual connotations.

But her fight for change at Amazon wasn't as successful, despite having made disturbing claims about her colleague.

She accused the male co-worker of allegedly intimidating her in meetings, both physically and verbally, and offending her with sexist remarks about her appearance and female employees in general, according to Anandkumar's complaints seen by Business Insider.

In one of the emails sent to Amazon's HR manager and Sivasubramanian, the executive overseeing the artificial intelligence team, Anandkumar said the colleague harassed her with late night calls and text messages, and that she was "scared" to continue working with him. After requesting a manager change, Anandkumar said she started working from cafes instead of going into the office, so she could avoid the colleague.

"I AM SCARED OF HIM AND NEED PROTECTION FROM HIM," Anandkumar wrote in one of the emails to senior leadership. "He was allowed to screw up my team and intimidate everyone."

At first, Sivasubramanian told Anandkumar that he was "appalled" by her allegations, and that he would take appropriate actions to address the issue, according to one of the emails. It's unclear whether he continued to directly correspond with Anandkumar as the investigation progressed.

"First of all, I want to make sure there is no ambiguity: What [NAME REDACTED] said to you is not OK," Sivasubramanian said in the email. "I have serious issues and need to aggressively coach him."

It's unclear what kind of coaching took place. Amazon didn't share many details after the investigation concluded, and didn't disclose what actions it had taken to address the issue. Anandkumar left Amazon in August 2018. The senior male colleague was later promoted to a VP position.

Amazon's spokesperson told Business Insider that the company was able to confirm some of her allegations and that it made certain arrangements to address those issues.

"We took appropriate action for any findings that were confirmed," the statement said.

Anandkumar accused Amazon for keeping the male colleague on the same project and in the same office space, even after the complaints were filed, although they were ordered not to interact with each other. The company spokesperson confirmed the two were eventually physically separated at work.

In one instance, Anandkumar told the company that the no-contact policy was practically meaningless given they're still working in the same office space, and asked to put the senior male colleague on a leave of absence instead. Amazon later asked the colleague not to attend the meetings with her, after Anandkumar made the request, emails show.

"The integrity of the investigation is seriously compromised if he is allowed to come in [meetings] during the investigation and intimidate his victims," Anandkumar wrote in one of her emails.

Anandkumar shared other details about her discomfort at previous companies, without identifying any company or manager names, in a blog post last year.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

'Demoralizing'

Some people who spoke to Business Insider questioned Anandkumar's credibility, pointing to the company's decision to ultimately not punish the senior male colleague. Others said the male colleague has previously made intimidating and condescending remarks, saying there's a lot of discontent even among current team members.

However, current and former Amazon employees told Business Insider that the company still has a long way to go to fix what they perceive as a broader sexist culture.

Several female employees at Amazon told Business Insider accounts of sexism where they felt discriminated against by their male managers. Their stories range from being ignored in meetings or having to tolerate sexist jokes, and often being passed over in promotion opportunities. These people said this part of Amazon's culture could be more prevalent at the company's AWS business, since the business software industry has long been more male-oriented.

In fact, multiple Amazon employees shared their own accounts of sexism in an internal document published in June, in an effort to add "inclusion" to the company's famous leadership principles, as previously reported by Business Insider.

In one case, a male boss allegedly called his female employee a "c***" in front of others at a dinner event. That person is still in charge of a team of over 40 people, although the female employee has filed a complaint with HR, the document said.

One person wrote that a manager berated a female engineer for trying to "lower the bar" when she asked him to interview more women for job openings. Another female engineer was told by a male colleague that Amazon was hiring more women "regardless of their skill sets."

Another person wrote that, in a 2019 leadership training class, only 6 or 7 people out of the 60 participants were women. Meanwhile, one female engineer says she was told by her male manager that she doesn't have what it takes to get promoted, and that she should instead "start looking for a rich husband."

Amazon's lack of diversity in the senior management roles is "demoralizing," several female employees told Business Insider. Until last year, the only female member in CEO Jeff Bezos's 20 or so top executive team, called the "S-team," was human relations chief Beth Galetti. A former employee said that the company's HR team is internally called the "pink ghetto" because it's the only team dominated by women.

Amazon's spokesperson said the company doesn't tolerate any kind of discrimination and stressed that it investigates all claims of harassment reported through HR or anonymous company channels.

"Amazon works hard to foster a culture where inclusion is the norm for each and every one of our 800,000+ employees," the statement said. "Diverse teams help us think bigger, and differently, about the products and services that we build for our customers and the day-to-day nature of our workplace."

Bezos addressed the diversity issue during an internal all-hands meeting in 2017, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by Business Insider. When an employee asked why the S-team has so few female or minority leaders, Bezos said he expects any change to happen "very incrementally over a long period of time" because of the team's low turnover.

Over the past year, Amazon has added three new female executives to Bezos's S-team, including its first black member, Alicia Boler Davis. Amazon also has a more diverse board of directors, with half of them women.

In her blog post last year, Anandkumar wrote that she's much happier at the two organizations she now works for — Nvidia and Caltech. She also said her former colleague at Amazon continues to intimidate her at conferences, but she's determined to not let that affect her work, as she doesn't want others to go through what she did.

"I am not afraid," she wrote in the blog. "And I will keep fighting until my last breath."

Workers are fighting for their right to wear Black Lives Matter gear. Here's why a lawyer says companies' decision to enforce bans is dangerous.

Kate Taylor Oct 3, 2020

Employees sued Whole Foods for sending workers home for wearing BLM masks. Erin Clark/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Workers at chains including Whataburger, Ralphs, and Whole Foods are fighting for their right to wear Black Lives Matter masks and other gear on the job.
Employers have the right to create dress codes that prevent workers from wearing clothing with any sort of messaging, according to employment and discrimination attorney Wendy Greene. 

However, if these policies are not regularly enforced, employers could be subject to discrimination claims. 

"Even though generally, employers are within their legal rights to bar employees from wearing 'Black Lives Matter' masks and shirts, employers should shift the focus from whether I can legally do so to should I do so?" Greene said.



Workers are fighting for their right to wear Black Lives Matter gear on the job. But, can they win in court?

Last week, Ma'Kiya Congious filed a complaint with Texas officials against Whataburger, saying the burger chain pushed her out after she wore a Black Lives Matter mask to work. Congious' attorney says she plans to file a racial-discrimination lawsuit against the burger chain.

Labor union United Food and Commercial Workers Local 21 also filed an unfair labor charge against Kroger-owned supermarket chains QFC and Ralphs in September, saying Seattle-area employees were told to remove Black Lives Matter buttons.

Meanwhile, back in July, Whole Foods workers filed a class action suit against the grocery chain, saying they were prevented from wearing Black Lives Matter masks on the job. The lawsuit now involves 28 Whole Foods and Amazon employees in nine states, some of whom say they were sent home or threatened with termination for wearing BLM gear.


The chains and a number of other companies that have banned employees from wearing BLM apparel at work emphasized that they were not specifically barring workers from wearing BLM masks or buttons. Instead, they said that they did not want workers to wear any messages that were unrelated to the brand at work.

"It's important for our customers to understand the purpose behind this policy," Whataburger said in a statement to Business Insider. "If we allow any non-Whataburger slogans as part of our uniforms, we have to allow all slogans. This could create tension and conflict among our employees and our customers. It is our job as a responsible brand to proactively keep our employees and customers safe."

Do these policies justify workplaces preventing employees from wearing BLM masks or other gear? The answer, according to employment and discrimination attorney Wendy Greene, is complicated.
The messy legality of Black Lives Matter mask bans

Employee lawsuits challenge employers' claims about uniform policies. Associated Press

Greene, a professor at the Drexel Kline School of Law, told Business Insider in July that private companies are typically given "considerable latitude in regulating an employee's dress while working." So, banning any messages on clothing would be allowed in the same way that banning certain colored shirts or jeans at work is considered an employer's legal right.

However, questions around how policies are enforced can create legal problems for employers. According to Greene, any written or informal uniform policies needs to be enforced "evenly and uniformly to prevent claims of differential treatment on the basis of protected classifications like race."

"If an employer disallows Black employees from wearing Black Lives Matter paraphernalia yet permits non-Black employees to wear paraphernalia advancing other social justice causes, the employer can be subject to a race discrimination claim," Greene said.

This alleged unequal treatment is the crux of Whole Foods workers' argument against the grocery chain and parent company Amazon.
Whole Foods workers say Black Lives Matter masks were targeted

Whole Foods workers have filed a class action lawsuit against the grocery chain. AP Photo/Gerry Broome

According to Whole Foods workers' complaint, the grocery chain's policy against "visible slogans, messages, logos, or advertising" was generally unenforced. Employees said people had worn apparel with cartoon characters, sports logos, and Pride flags to support LGBTQ coworkers without facing repercussions.


"Plaintiffs and other Whole Foods employees expected Whole Foods would support their decision to wear [BLM] masks because Whole Foods has expressed support for inclusivity and equality and because it previously allowed its employees to express support for their LGBTQ+ coworkers through their apparel without discipline," the complaint states.

Workers allege they were sent home when they refused to take off their masks, with Savannah Kinzer claiming she was fired from her job at a Cambridge, Massachusetts Whole Foods for organizing workers to wear BLM masks.

"It is possible it's uncomfortable for people, but it's not political," Kinzer told Business Insider in July. "It's human rights. It is a simple, simple statement: Black lives matter, that's it. They matter."

Whole Foods declined to comment on pending litigation, but denied that any employees were terminated for wearing Black Lives Matter masks or other gear at work.

"It is critical to clarify that no Team Members have been terminated for wearing Black Lives Matter face masks or apparel," a Whole Foods spokesperson said in July. "Savannah Kinzer was separated from the company for repeatedly violating our time and attendance policy by not working her assigned shifts, reporting late for work multiple times in the past nine days, and choosing to leave during her scheduled shifts."
Should companies let workers wear masks?

Greene said that there are bigger questions than simply legality that companies need to consider when it comes to barring workers from wearing Black Lives Matter masks. Enforcing these policies could cause employees and the public to believe that their commitments to combat racism are "insincere and performative."

"Even though generally, employers are within their legal rights to bar employees from wearing 'Black Lives Matter' masks and shirts, employers should shift the focus from whether I can legally do so to should I do so?" Greene said.

"That in mind, employers should assess whether developing grooming policies barring 'Black Lives Matter' masks and shirts in the workplace is in furtherance of or in contradiction to their organizational commitment to racial equity and justice," Greene continued.


Increasingly, employees are not satisfied with their companies staying on the sidelines when it comes to political and social issues. Jacinta Gauda, the principal at The Gauda Group — a communications firm that works on branding, strategy, and diversity and inclusion — told Business Insider that the US has a "generation of workers who will push traditional boundaries and test the company's commitments."

"Increasingly, workers want to be heard, and wearing a mask, t-shirt, or hat with a powerful message gives workers voice," said Gauda. "In today's workplace, it is essential to give all workers a safe, risk-free way to communicate their concerns and experiences around racial issues."

The US Army thinks these new mixed-reality 'doggles' can make special operations canines better than ever in battle

Ryan Pickrell
Oct 3, 2020

Command Sight founder A.J. Peper's dog Mater wearing augmented reality goggles Courtesy photo

A.J. Peper, the founder of the small technology company Command Sight, has invented an animal-wearable head-mounted display designed to allow handlers to better

 

communicate with military working dogs — high-performing canines that track narcotics, hunt explosives, and even engage enemies.

Visual cues can be placed in a digital overlay of the real world to direct and guide the dog in ways that physical and voice commands and lasers do not permit.

Senior Army Research Lab scientist Stephen Lee told Insider that this device could "help revolutionize how we use military working dogs off leash."


Thinking about new ways to talk to his dog, A.J. Peper, the founder of Command Sight, came up with an idea that the US Army says could revolutionize the way special operations forces direct military working dogs on the battlefield.

It's augmented reality for canines, and it works.

Over the past few years, the Army has been developing a mixed-reality heads-up display for its soldiers based on Microsoft's HoloLens technology.

Considering the potential applications of augmented reality headsets, Peper, who started a small technology company striving to bridge communication gaps between humans and canines, took a very different approach. "Why not put a HoloLens on a dog?" he thought.


Taking a regular pair of Rex Specs goggles, already used for canine eye protection by the military, Peper added an optoelectronic component, creating a heads-up display where visual cues can be placed in a digital overlay of the real world to direct and guide the animals.

Working with handlers, military working dogs track down narcotics, find explosives, and even engage enemy combatants. A Special Forces dog named Conan, for example, helped take down ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi last fall and was awarded a medal by the president.

A view of the animal-wearable head-mounted display (AW-HMD) from the recent patent filing Courtesy photo

The augmented reality goggles that Peper invented are connected to a command interface that the handler can use to not only see what the dog sees but also communicate with the animal in real time, making their interaction more effective.

Using a chest- or wrist-mounted display or a laptop, Peper explained, "the handler could see the dog's environment and click anywhere or on any object in that environment to which they wanted to draw the dog's attention."


The Army, which has been supporting the project through the Army Research Office and its Small Business Innovation Research program, is very interested in the goggles.

Stephen Lee, a senior Army Research Lab scientist with a Ph.D. in physical organic chemistry, told Insider that "if we can, in a canine's augmented reality, place a point, like a laser point, to guide the dog when it's going around a turn or into a building to a specific spot and we can see what the dog sees at the same time, that will help revolutionize how we use military working dogs off leash."

A.J. Peper and his dog, Mater Courtesy photo

'A better way to talk to my dog'

Before he became an inventor, Peper was on a path towards a career in education, but after getting his Ph.D. in educational leadership, he decided to leave academia and instead become a consultant for emerging technology projects.

Throughout these endeavors, Peper, a "big dog lover" who has been very passionate about their training since he was a kid, was also involved in Shutzhund, a kind of advanced dog training focused on protection.


The idea that led Peper to launch his own company — developing a mixed-reality headset for canines — came in early 2017, when Peper asked himself, "How can I merge the fun and interesting parts of technology with the passion I have for dogs and training?"

That got him thinking about human-canine communication. "I wish there was a better way to talk to my dog," he thought. And, that's when it hit him.

With help from various partners, he quickly put together a working prototype, and with a functional prototype, he was able to start testing with his dog, Mater — the mascot for his company, Command Sight.

Augmented reality for dogs is cool, but the big question was whether or not the animal can actually do anything with the information that is delivered to them. "The resounding answer from the tests that I've run is yes," Peper said.


The testing, which was conducted safely and humanely and was not at all invasive, involved putting the goggles on Mater and then using the command interface to place an augmented reality indicator in Mater's field of view to identify an object of interest. Peper's dog would then energetically run to that object.

"You can imagine my jubilation when I put the system on my dog, fired it up, and he reacted to the indicator. Up until that point, it had all been theory," Peper told Insider. "I was jumping up and down and beside myself. It was a really amazing moment."

As Mater had never worn goggles, it took him about a week to get used to them. It took another two weeks to train him to respond to a physical laser, a common tool used by the military and law enforcement to direct some working dogs. It then took another week after that for him to make the transition from the physical laser to the augmented reality indicator.

The next step in the development process for the canine augmented reality headset is to miniaturize and ruggedize the system, as well as make it completely wireless, for rigorous field testing with special operations military working dogs, high-performing animals expected to quickly adapt to the new technology.

A drawing of a canine wearing the AW-HMD from the recent patent filing. Courtesy photo


Solving 'fundamental challenges that operators have'

Handlers typically use physical and voice commands to give military working dogs basic directions and lasers to provide more specific guidance, such as identifying a specific target or object of interest.


The effectiveness of physical and voice commands is limited when the dog is off leash and operating away from the handler, and there are serious concerns about the use of a light source that could be visible to the enemy.

If a working dog had augmented reality goggles though, a handler could provide directions to the dog as it rounded a corner, went over a hill, or entered a building, and they could do so from a safe position without alerting the enemy to the team's presence or the dog's intended target.

Once this technology is operational, "a handler could sit a mile away in a bunker, completely safe, and they can send the dog out and send these very specific directional cues to the dog," Peper explained.

And, the dog would move and act with confidence even without the handler at their side.


"In terms of the system being of value and being more than just cool, it really does solve for some real fundamental challenges that operators have," Peper said.

That includes the need for a reliable animal-mounted camera.

Lee told Insider that once Peper's goggles are operational, "it'll be one of the best camera systems period, even without the augmented reality. We're seeing what the dog can see."

"When it's mounted on the back, you see where the dog's torso is pointed," he said, explaining that having a camera inside the goggles will "be a breakthrough in itself."


He said that in ten years of researching and working with military working dogs, he had never seen anything like Peper's canine augmented reality system, which has him "super excited."

Lee said he expects this innovative technology to lead to more interesting possibilities. "I think that what [Peper] is going to do is open up amazing new opportunities we don't even recognize yet."

My job of 14 years was destroyed by a private equity company. It's time for Democrats to actually stand up to Wall Street.

Kristi Lynn Van Bucken,
Opinion Contributor
Oct 4, 2020

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee former Vice President Joe Biden and his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) arrive to deliver remarks at the Alexis Dupont High School on August 12, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware. Drew Angerer/Getty

A private equity firm bought and bankrupted Shopko, a popular retail chain store.

I was one of thousands of Shopko employees who faced the wrath of Wall Street flippancy.

If Democrats don't stand up to these big banks, this behavior will continue to cost regular people their jobs.

Kristi Lynn Van Bucken was an employee at Shopko for 14 years.
This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.

The November election will determine whether our economy for the next four years will benefit working people like me or continue to enrich Wall Street millionaires.

We already know what four more years of a Trump presidency and Republican agenda will mean: more deregulation and tax breaks for the wealthy, which only make it harder for working families like mine to put food on the table.

So I was eager to hear from Joe Biden and his campaign when the Democratic National Convention came to my home state of Wisconsin last month. Hearing Democrats talk about building a fair economy for all, including for essential workers like myself, was a stark contrast to what we've seen and heard from President Trump and his fellow Republicans. But while the Biden campaign introduced a number of platforms to put working people first, it became clear to me that there are not yet enough concrete and permanent solutions to fight back against Wall Street's rampant greed, which is only growing during this pandemic.

Democrats, be a party that actually stands up to Wall Street.

During the Trump Administration, I was one of thousands of Shopko employees throughout the Midwest who were left unemployed, uninsured and struggling to make ends meet when Shopko was purchased by a private equity firm and bankrupted last year.

As the New York Times revealed , wealthy investors like Carl Icahn are exploiting the coronavirus crisis to literally make money off of the demise of people's jobs and livelihoods. They're calling it the "Big Short 2.0." Instead of betting on the housing crash, as they did in 2008, Wall Street executives are betting on the demise of malls.

It's clear Republicans will give a pass to the Big Short 2.0. The ball is now in the Democratic Party's court to demonstrate that it will chart a different course.

However, Democrats must go beyond lip service, and offer real solutions and policies that will rein in Wall Street. Unfortunately, that was all but missing in last month's convention.

And yet, in the Democratic party's national 2020 policy platform, Wall Street was mentioned just four times — including once in the table of contents. There is not a single mention of the pain that private equity firms inflict on our communities, as Sun Capital did with Shopko in Wisconsin, or a plan to relieve that pain and rein these firms in. The Wall Street Journal even noted corporate America's "sigh of relief" when Senator Kamala Harris was added to the Democratic presidential ticket.

The demise of Shopko, where I worked and found community for 14 years, is a classic example of why Wall Street is the enemy of working people.

For more than a decade, Shopko offered me and my coworkers not just a paycheck, but a family. We were proud to work at a company that was founded in Green Bay and served Wisconsin families.

But when Sun Capital Partners, a Florida-headquartered private equity firm, bought out Shopko in 2005, that community and my financial security were ripped away. No matter how successfully we ran the business, Sun Capital's apparent intention was not growth but profit, and they made that profit by ruining people's lives.

Over the next decade, Sun Capital executives drowned Shopko in nearly $1 billion in debt. They pushed the store into bankruptcy, leaving more than 14,000 employees desperately searching for a lifeline. Even during Shopko's liquidation, Sun Capital executives continued to collect: In total, Shopko executives paid themselves nearly $67 million in dividends and fees. My coworkers and I were offered nothing.

When Sun Capital finally shuttered Shopko's doors, they also broke commitments to Shopko workers by failing to distribute once-promised severance payments, leaving many in utter financial distress. Sun Capital pulled the same move on the state of Wisconsin, when it skipped out on $8 million in sales tax payments.

Astonishingly, Sun Capital isn't the only culprit in destroying the lives of working families and crippling our economy. Since 2009, private equity firms have destroyed over 1.3 million jobs by bankrupting retail companies and stripping them for parts. Many of the brands you used to shop at — from Toys 'R' Us, to Payless ShoeSource, Sears, and ArtVan — were destroyed the same way. In nearly all cases, workers were left with nothing.

Even our hospitals and nursing homes are being taken over by Wall Street, leading to major staffing cuts and unsafe conditions during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

As the Big Short 2.0 shows, action is urgently required, and that's why former retail employees have come together with United for Respect, a multiracial national nonprofit organization fighting for bold policy changes that improve the lives of people who work in retail, to fight for and win severance pay and demand legislators establish common sense rules for private equity firms.

Without a specific plan to combat Wall Street's excesses and greed, the Democrats' vision for a just and fair economic recovery — and their outreach to working people like me in this election — needs improvement. They can start by adopting the Stop Wall Street Looting Act (SWSLA) in their party platform, which was introduced by Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Mark Pocan last year, and would rein in the most harmful private equity tactics.

SWSLA would accomplish this by ending Wall Street's immunity from the debts, legal liabilities, and legal violations they pile on companies after they buy them out and gut them. SWSLA would also end the federal tax benefits for private equity firms which encourage their excessive use of leveraged buyouts. And in the event of company bankruptcy, like what we experienced at Shopko, SWSLA would ensure that private equity firms like Sun Capital Partners cannot just cut and run on their paycheck, severance, and pension obligations to employees.

It bears repeating: Democrats, be a party that actually stands up to Wall Street, and offer concrete and permanent solutions to fight back against Wall Street greed, because the strongest economic recovery — one that provides paid family leave, affordable health care and financial security — will be the one led by working people, not Wall Street.

Unemployed in North Dakota: A welder who's been out of work since February shares his story
Will Meyer Oct 4, 2020

Dodd (not pictured) has been out of work since February. Juan Silva/Getty Images

Garrett Dodd is a 22-year-old welder in the North Dakota oil fields based in Watford City, North Dakota.

He's been unemployed since February.

In the meantime, he's started doing photography and media production, but he says he's not done with welding just yet.

This is his story, as told to Will Meyer.


I moved to Watford City, North Dakota, from Fort Worth, Texas, in 2017.

I was part of a very active welding program in high school, and I had a really good teacher who got me interested in it. I started welding right out of high school. I worked for a city for a little while; I thought that's where I was going to retire at one point in time. And thankfully that didn't work out.

I ended up working in a fab[rication] shop in Dallas making $16/hour. I knew I could make more money, frankly, if I moved elsewhere. I worked in that fab shop for about a year, and every night when I was working there I would go home and get on social media and talk to people that are already in the oil fields, and try to make enough contacts for somebody to offer me a job.

I finally got to the point where somebody offered me a job, and I pondered on it for about four hours or so, and called him back to tell him I wanted the job, and he said, "Oh, that job isn't available anymore."

After that job slipped away, I knew the next opportunity I got I was taking.

And then a day or two later I got an email from a guy who is now a good friend of mine — it was a mass email that he sent out to a lot of kids that were in my position. And he said "Hey, this guy's looking for labor hands in Watford City, North Dakota, here's the pay, here's the number."

I called him, and he said, "The sooner you can be here, the sooner I can guarantee you a job."

It was a Wednesday, and I said "What if I was there Monday?" He said, "if you're here by Monday, I can offer you a job."

So Thursday I went in and told my boss — they knew it was coming, they definitely saw it happening — "I got an opportunity here, and I'm not missing it."


Times were tough back then; I didn't have enough money to travel across the country, and so I asked for my last check a week early. They told me no, and that Thursday could be my last day instead — they didn't even want me back Friday. So Thursday I stayed up all night and packed most of my belongings, and was gone the next day.
I took a chance and drove across the country.

Because I knew if I came up here and actually worked, and didn't fool around, I could be successful.

After some bumps in the road and a detour to Colorado, I got up here and I was able to work consistently with a welder. I worked with him for eight months. And after eight months, I was ready to break out and become a welder myself.

After working on my own pretty consistently for a couple years, making more than $200,000,I was laid off in November 2019 as oil prices were dropping. Layoffs for a welder are pretty common. It's nothing to freak out about or be ashamed of, it happens very regularly.


They laid me off, and I thought "OK, that happens," especially around Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I made what I wanted to that year, and thought, "If I'm not able to work the rest of the year, no big deal." And then I wasn't able to work the rest of the year.

At the beginning of the year I found a gas plant that needed building, and I was hired on with another contractor. We built that gas plant, but that wasn't a whole lot of work. They were pretty far along with that project, so there wasn't a whole lot to do.
I worked there a month and they laid me off. I haven't really worked since February at all.

I just started moving onto a different hustle because I can't just not work. I have to do something. I have a lot of camera equipment, and I started doing photography and media production around town. I'm just kind of working on getting that off the ground. I don't really care to take family photos; I like to build commercials for businesses.

I'm definitely not done with welding. I have a lot of money invested into welding and earning potential with it. I enjoy media production and it's fun — it's just a matter of getting clients to constantly shell out money.

The oil price was also dropping before the pandemic really set in. I think there was still a crash coming, but the pandemic just really did a number on it.

You have to try to stay as positive as you can, I guess, but it's daunting for sure.

The day to day is kind of daunting; it puts you in survival mode, which I don't like. Just because it's hard to think beyond the tip of your nose. You're just trying to think of what the next day holds, not what the next ten years holds.

I'm just hoping for the best.

Remote work has shaken up energy costs for office landlords and employees. Here's how one provider is working with corporates to offset workers' higher electricity bills.
Alex Nicoll Oct 5, 2020

Office real estate has seen energy usage fall as some spaces remain unused and more workers work remotely. Shutterstock

Energy costs have fallen for commercial offices, but raised for workers at home.
Still, most office buildings can only shut down so much. At most, office buildings are using 25% less energy than usual. 

With energy costs shifting from landlords and employers to employees, one energy company is launching a program to allow employers to pay the difference.

The shift to remote work has brought office workers to their couches, desks, and kitchen tables, potentially upending office real estate markets and the boundaries between personal life and work.

It's also changed energy costs for office buildings and for employees who now spend 9-to-5 workdays in their new makeshift home offices.

Office real estate has seen energy usage fall, with building operations data company Hatch Data reporting office energy usage down 24% from pre-pandemic levels in May. It now hovers 10% down from pre-pandemic levels.

Lee Dunfee, managing director for engineering operations at Cushman & Wakefield, told Business Insider that commercial offices have seen roughly 15-25% reductions in energy use year over year.

Simultaneously, residential energy use has risen by 10-15% since the start of the pandemic, according to David Klatt, VP of operations and finance for a smart-building software company, Logical Buildings.

At the same time, business leaders are continuing to signal a more flexible future of work, which almost certainly will mean more office workers will remain at home.

Read more: 20 major companies that have announced employees can work remotely long-term

This could trigger a permanent shift in costs paid by employers versus those paid by employees.

One energy company, Arcadia Energy, has pioneered a new workplace benefit for remote work, allowing companies to offset their employees increased energy costs at home. As companies struggle to find benefits that can replace location-bound benefits like in-office lunches, Arcadia's subsidies could be a way for employers to eat up some of the costs of remote work.

We spoke to real estate and energy experts about whether these energy trends could continue and why do mostly empty office buildings still require so much energy.
An unprecedented dip

Almost all office space saw a huge dip in energy usage at the start of the pandemic. With fewer people coming into the office amidst lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders, lights were turned off for days at a time and small appliances were unplugged and went unused.

HVAC systems had to work substantially less hard to cool air in the absence of the heat of people's bodies and computers, especially during the summer months.

What they didn't do was shut down completely, even when the only building occupants were office managers checking mail.

"It's important to note that commercial office buildings for the most part didn't shut down and turn off," Dunfee said.

Lease agreements usually require landlords to make space accessible, and comfortable, for office tenants for an agreed-upon period of time, whether all day or during typical work hours. Without receiving consent from all tenants, landlords couldn't actually reduce operating hours or lower the working load on the HVAC by increasing the temperature or humidity level in an office.

Read more: The venture arm of a massive Canadian pension plan takes us inside its search for its first construction tech investment. Here's its playbook.

This means that single-tenant buildings were likely able to reduce their energy usage more than multiple-tenant buildings, because of the ease of negotiation between landlord and tenant, and that owner-occupied office space likely saw the lowest reduction.

"For a company like Amazon, that owns the building and has its employees work there, it can tell employees to work from home and shut down the building," Eric Tilden, director of sustainability at Cushman said. "Commercial office buildings simply can't do that."

With roughly 25% of workers back in the office in major markets, according to Kastle's Back to Work Barometer, and the energy load switching from cooling to heating, energy levels may get closer to typical levels this winter.
Bringing the costs home

Reports have shown that overall energy consumption has waned during the pandemic, but office workers still brought their need for climate conditioning and well-charged appliances home.

And, with higher usage, comes higher bills, and now employees foot the bill to stay comfortable during work hours.

"That cost burden has been shifted from employers to employees," Owen Quinlan, VP of analytics and data science at Arcadia, told Business Insider. "I think we need to think, as a society, how to manage that cost shift."

Arcadia is a clean energy company that integrates with public utilities and is the largest residential energy broker in the country. Arcadia's data shows that bills have risen roughly $10 to $30 a month for employees working at home, Quinlan said.

As a result of this bump, Arcadia has created a partnership program that has attracted some large corporates such as McDonald's. Companies can partner with Arcadia, and then have their employees choose to switch their utility bills to Arcadia.

Read more: Arcadia has raised $70 million on the promise it can take on 'a massive old monopoly industry' and slash your power bill

After employees switch their bills, the employer can decide to subsidize their increased costs or to buy carbon offsets to replace their increased emissions while working remotely (McDonald's has chosen the second option).

By choosing to subsidize remote energy costs, employers can introduce a benefit that fits the challenges and increased costs of remote work. Even in a world where employees spend some days back in the office, increased energy costs will remain an issue.

An Arcadia spokesperson said that renewable energy companies SkySpecs and CustomerFirst Renewables have also signed up for the program. The spokesperson also said that the company is in negotiations with banks, pharmaceutical, e-commerce and tech companies about offering the service.


Want to hear from the leaders of digital transformation in finance? Insider Intelligence is hosting two free webinars called "The Bank Insider Panel - Acting on Consumers' Accelerating Digital Adoption." Click here to reserve your spot. Learn more about the financial services industry

We need a Smokey the Bear-like character to help America tackle COVID-19
Pat Giles,
Opinion Contributor
Oct 4, 2020

Time Life Pictures/USDA Forest Service/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images

In our country's history, we've long relied on brand characters to help get us through rough times

The COVID-19 pandemic has been an increasingly challenging experience.

I've had a hand in influential brand character campaigns, and we need a new character that can energize positivity in these uncertain times.

Pat Giles is the Head of Studio at Holler.

This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.

Advertising can save the world. No, really! In fact, advertising may be part of the solution to some of our most difficult crises including the current pandemic. History has shown us that what people need is a good brand character wearing a mask.

I'm talking about characters, not mascots. Mascots are for sports teams, not brands. They represent players, fans, and city loyalties, but not a brand. I have nothing against mascots but I also love brand characters and have worked on many of them as a creative director and animator. What I learned was that a truly great brand character can make me want to eat a particular cereal, buy insurance, and bake dinner rolls. It can make me change my mind and change my behavior.

An inspirational brand character could be just what we need as a nation to come together at a critical time for public health.

Over the past 80 years, several fictional brand characters have shifted public consciousness and changed societal behaviors in measurable and important ways, and did so across party lines and above the fray of political lenses. The Ad Council, founded in 1942, was usually responsible for these campaigns. An examination of these characters shows their importance in history. With several major crises in front us, and deep polarization in this election year, we should discuss the importance of using one right now.

The Advertising Council was created by a former Sears Roebuck executive and head of the War Production Board in the FDR Administration, Donald Nelson. Its purpose was to use tools of mass communication to mobilize the public, as the nation did with weapons manufacturing, to win World War II.

Pop culture characters created by the Ad Council are sometimes mistaken for pure propaganda, as in the case of one of the most popular icons from the era, Rosie the Riveter. But in fact, Rosie was created by the Ad Council in partnership with the J. Walter Thompson Agency to introduce two million women into the workforce as part of the government's war effort.

The most famous of these Rosie ads was an illustration from J. Howard Miller with the immortal tagline,"We Can Do It," the campaign challenged millennia of patriarchal standards with a call-to-arms for women to join the battle and take on jobs previously thought of as for men only.

WWII patriotic We Can Do It poster by J. Howard Miller featuring woman factory worker in bandana rolling up her sleeve & flexing her arm muscles. Time Life Pictures/National Archives/The LIFE Picture Collection

By today's standards, the idea is antiquated. It was another thirty years before women as the family breadwinner became commonplace, and the battle against discrimination and for pay-equity remains. Yet, Rosie stands as an excellent exemplar for changing minds, of men and women alike, in advance of the common good. The "Rosie" campaign was only the first of many that would change public perceptions in a way that went beyond politics. Who couldn't agree with the spirit of "we can do it"?

The longest running campaign in Ad Council history is Smokey the Bear, launched at a time when nine out of ten forest fires were accidental. The science was clear: educate the public in order to reduce the number of accidental fires.

While wildfires are a growing challenge in the age of the climate crisis, according to the Ad Council, "the average number of acres lost annually to wildfire has decreased from 22 million in 1944 to an average of 6.7 million today." Now, it is also true that we are living through a very dangerous year, with six of the largest wildfires in US history occurring in 2020. To say that Smokey has his work cut out for him in the era of climate change is an understatement. But, with a 96% recognition and 70% unaided recall, Smokey is the most successful public-service brand-characters in history.

Smokey is effective because he made the issue personal in the tag line "Only YOU can prevent forest fires." He didn't scold the viewer. Rather, he empowered the viewer to be part of the solution. In the case of COVID-19, this could be an effective positioning. The average person can stop the spread by wearing a mask, practicing social-distancing and regular hand-washing. It's up to each of us.

Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Hundreds of campaigns like these have been able to rouse the public while overcoming typical pitfalls like alienating groups of people. In the 1970's, Woodsy Owl challenged people to "Give a Hoot, Don't Pollute." Crash-Test Dummies got people to "Buckle Up" in the 1980s. McGruff the Crime Dog took "a Bite Out of Crime." When I worked on the McGruff campaign, I learned with certainty that brand characters can, in fact, change human behavior and are effective tools to guide and unify communities.

Did McGruff eradicate crime? No. Did Crash Test Dummies prevent all car accidents? No. Did Woodsy Owl eradicate pollution? No. Were these characters able to make a dent in each of these challenges? Absolutely.

At Holler, my team and I partnered with the Ad Council on a campaign to drive conversations and perceptions on mental health. Together we created characters Goldie & Mo as part of the "Seize the Awkward" campaign to empower young people to talk to friends about their mental health. Created by Holler Animator Ryan Cho, our internal data shows that Goldie & Mo stickers have already started 100,000 conversations about mental health, helping people connect and have empathetic conversations instead of shame or fear. Again, underlying social science is driving the strategy: Talking about it is the first step.

Now, what can we learn from these campaigns as we face a new public health crisis? The evidence is plain and simple: wearing masks will lower the probability of transmission and aid in stopping the spread of the virus. Yet, people are still unclear about this, and politicians are failing to mandate their usage for fear of impinging on people's freedoms. Unlike seatbelts and forest fires, it is not "illegal" to walk around unmasked, but COVID-19 cases in the US continue to climb. There was a time in this country when driving with a seatbelt was seen as a hindrance, as unnecessary, and as an infringement of freedom. It took a combination of laws and public education to get seatbelt use to become standard practice.

Independently, organizations, brands and companies have adopted masked content and characters to take a stance and spread awareness. Masks have popped up on profile icons. Even local statues are being outfitted with masks. Evidence already shows that people are seeking out this content to understand and cope with the crisis. On Holler, our mask-related content has already been shared 1.3 million times in messaging and in financial transactions on Venmo. These were created as part of #AdTechCares.

SEE MORE AT https://www.businessinsider.com/character-smokey-the-bear-help-covid-19-cartoon-pandemic-2020-9

It's time for a brand character to get out there and educate the public. Or maybe it will take all of them. What Smokey, Rosey, McGruff and Woodsy have all taught us is that human nature is willing to change – that our neighbors, peers, and people on the other side of the aisle can be inspired by a character with a unifying goal. One that shows us that the slowing the spread of COVID-19 is up to us – and it starts with wearing a mask.


Pat Giles has led the creative advertising assignments for a who's who of character-driven brands, including Green Giant, Pillsbury, Lucky Charms, Trix, Cookie Crisp, Cocoa Puffs, Honey Nut Cheerios, Cheerios, Honey Stars, Count Chocula, Franken Berry, Boo-Berry, McGruff, My Little Pony, Littlest Pet Shop, Squinkies, MARVEL/Playskool and is currently Head of Studio for Holler.


This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author(s).Read the original article on Opinion Contributor. Copyright 2020.

Scientists engineered plastic-eating 'super-enzymes' that can break down bottles in days
Aylin Woodward
Oct 4, 2020

Used plastic bottles are seen at a waste collection point in Tokyo, Japan, November 21, 2018. Toru Hanai/Reuters

More than 300 million tons of plastic are produced annually worldwide, and most plastics take centuries to break down.

A new study describes a "super-enzyme" engineered using proteins derived from plastic-eating bacteria. It can recycle a common type of plastic in days.

Such enzymes could help address the growing problem of plastic pollution.

More than 300 million tons of plastic are produced annually worldwide. Most take hundreds of years to break down, and even then, they just splinter into tiny microplastic pieces that will likely never biodegrade. Microplastics make it into the food we eat and show up in our poop.

But new types of engineered enzymes, created from plastic-eating bacteria, appear able to break down plastics in a matter of days.

These "super-enzymes" were made by researchers at the Center for Enzyme Innovation in the UK and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado. They break down a type of common plastic known as polyethylene terephthalate (PET) — used in single-use bottles as well as clothing and carpets — into its chemical building blocks.

Used at scale, they could reduce our reliance on fossil fuels (which are needed to produce new plastic), instead allowing manufacturers to reuse the same plastics over and over.

Engineering a 'super' plastic-eater

John McGeehan, director of the Center for Enzyme Innovation, is developing a "super-enzyme" that can break down plastic. University of Portsmouth/Stefan Ventur/PA

Researchers first discovered plastic-eating bacteria in 2016 at a bottle-recycling facility in Japan. The organisms produce two enzymes that help them break down PET within weeks. Scientists dubbed the enzymes PETase and MHETase.

In 2018, a group at the Center for Enzyme Innovation took PETase and tweaked it to increase the speed with which it deconstructed PET. This week, the team revealed in a new study that they improved on the process even further by stitching together DNA from PETase and MHETase into one "super-enzyme."

"PETase attacks the surface of the plastics and MHETase chops things up further, so it seemed natural to see if we could use them together, mimicking what happens in nature," biologist John McGeehan, the lead author of the study, said in a press release.

Whereas pitting PETase and MHETase against the same plastic doubled the breakdown speed they saw in 2018, this new creation breaks plastic down six times faster.

"We decided to try to physically link them, like two Pac-men joined by a piece of string," McGeehan said.

Millions of tons of plastic enters the ocean each year

A Palestinian worker carries plastic items to be recycled in a factory in the Gaza Strip, July 13, 2020. Mohammed Salem/Reuters

Global production of plastics has increased rapidly over the last 70 years, and it continues to grow at around 8% per year. Up to 14 million tons of plastic enters the ocean annually, an estimated 40% of which is single-use products like plastic bottles, which wind up in the ocean within the same year they're produced.

Scientists found more than 414 million pieces of plastic trash on scarcely populated islands in the Indian Ocean last year. Researchers have also discovered plastic in the guts of tiny creatures on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, 36,000 feet down. One study showed more PET microplastics accumulate in the deep ocean than float on the surface.

Microplastics less than half a centimeter in size in the Cocos Islands. Jennifer Lavers

Addressing this plastic pollution problem, of course, requires limiting production. But innovations like the new super-enzymes can help recycle plastic that already exists.

The French company Carbios is also working to develop plastic-eating enzymes, aiming to utilize them in "industrial-scale recycling within five years," according to The Guardian.

"If we can make better, faster enzymes by linking them together and provide them to companies like Carbios, and work in partnership, we could start doing this within the next year or two," McGeehan told The Guardian.

Another option, though still in its infancy, is to use magnetic "nano-coils" to break down plastics.

A nano-coil barely wider than one billionth of a meter. J. Kang et al./Matter July 31, 2019

A study published last year showed that these coils, which are just half the width of a human hair, create chemical reactions that convert plastic into carbon dioxide and water.

Softbank's new food service robot Servi could replace waitstaff and food runners at restaurants
Mary Meisenzahl
Oct 4, 2020, 6:25 AM

Softbank Servi. Reuters

Japanese company Softbank debuted Servi, a new food service robot.

Softbank is the company behind humanoid robot Pepper and the owner of Boston Dynamics.

Servi has already worked at Denny's and other restaurants amid Japan's labor shortage.

Japanese tech giant Softbank is testing out a new food service robot in Japan, Reuters reported. Servi, the appropriately-named robot, has several tiers that can be used to deliver food to customers as an answer both to social distancing because of COVID-19 and Japan's labor shortage.

Servi will act as a waiter, with the ability to carry food and drinks from the kitchen to tables. It will use 3D cameras and LIDAR technology to navigate around tables and customers, the same technology used by autonomous vehicles. It officially launches in Japan in January but has already been tested by some restaurants as a way to offer contactless service, including Denny's.
Softbank Servi. Reuters

When Servi launches, companies can lease the robot for $950 per month over a three year period. It's made by Bear Robotics in California, which also produced a Servi Mini for serving drinks. The full-size Servi has two trays and a bus tub, while the Servi Mini has one tray and one tub. Both can be controlled by an attached touchscreen or external tablet.

Softbank Servi. Reuters

Earlier this year, Bear Robotics raised $32 million in a funding round led by Softbank. Softbank has a history of investing in robotics startups, like Boston Dynamics, the company behind the infamous dog-like robots that went on sale this summer.


Softbank's most famous humanoid robot, Pepper, has also been used throughout the pandemic as a greeter and to ease loneliness among mild COVID-19 cases in Japan. Versions of the robot are also helping customers remain a safe distance apart in German grocery stores, while its Whiz cleaning vacuum robot has been used in hotels and other sites.

Servi. Business Wire