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Skyline Robotics is disrupting the century-old practice of window washing with new technology that the startup hopes will redefine a risky industry.  

Its window-washing robot, Ozmo, is now operational in Tel Aviv and New York, and has worked on major Manhattan buildings like 10 Hudson Yards, 383 Madison, 825 3rd Avenue, and 7 World Trade Center in partnership with the city’s largest commercial window cleaner Platinum and real estate giant The Durst Organization.  

The machine is suspended from the side of a high-rise. A robotic arm with a brush attached to the end cleans the window following instructions from a LiDAR camera, which uses laser technology to map 3D environments. The camera maps the building’s exterior and identifies the parameters of the windows.  

“What the LiDAR is actually doing as the basket is descending is sort of painting itself a picture of the facade that it’s facing,” Blum said. 

Although the Ozmo is controlled by a human operator at the top of the building, chief operating officer and founder Ross Blum said that the robot could be operated fully remotely. 

“That person, other than regulation, doesn’t actually have to be there for our sake,” Blum said. “We could, in theory, remote-control Ozmo from different parts of the world.” 

Reverse osmosis removes contaminants from the water, hence the name Ozmo. According to Blum, this makes the cleaning process more efficient. 

“We don’t need a separate squeegee and a separate brush to get a perfectly clean window,” he said. “It’s one motion,” he said. 

The current cost of the Ozmo is approximately $500,000, which has a three-to-five-year payback for building owners, according to Skyline Robotics board member and Platinum CEO James Halpin. 

A changing workforce 

The machine is part of a new wave of technology that can replicate human work. In recent months, artificial-intelligence innovations like ChatGPT have dominated headlines, prompting questions about employment vulnerabilities in customer service, writing and computer programming gigs.  

A 2020 report by the World Economic Forum states that 85 million jobs will be displaced by 2025 due to the “robot revolution,” but that 97 million jobs requiring “reskilling and retraining” will be generated.  

Jobs in maintenance and construction, like window washing, were ranked as having a “medium” share of tasks (30% to 70%) susceptible to automation, according to a 2016 study by the Brookings Institution.  

Platinum’s Halpin said his company was interested in supporting the Ozmo because of a worker shortage in the field of high-rise window washing. 

“Currently, we are experiencing a labor shortage in all real blue-collar fields in New York City,” Halpin said. “We could hire another 20% just to keep up with the current work that we have at this point.” 

Both Halpin and Blum said their goal eventually is not to replace human workers but to “retrain and reassign” window washers to operate the technology. 

But logistically, the Ozmo cuts down on the amount of people needed to clean a building from a team of three to four human window washers to one operator.  

The Ozmo has some window washers, like Jose Nieves, a 23-year veteran of the industry and window washer at Rockefeller center, concerned about their livelihoods. He believes the dangers of window washing are overblown and that human labor should be preserved.  

“Of course, there are dangers with our profession, but we are skilled, trained workers who take those risks very seriously much like many dangerous jobs that exist in this country,” Nieves said. “Are there no possible dangers associated with a robot operating heavy equipment hundreds of feet above people’s heads?” 

Nieves is represented by the SEIU 32BJ, the property service union for many of the workers on the East Coast. According to the organization, there are 500 to 550 unionized window washers in New York City who earn $31.69/hour during the peak summer season.  

“As a society we should not be cutting costs on the backs of workers,” Nieves said. “I would say we have been doing a great job without these robots. Don’t fix it unless it’s broken.” 

Robot-human collaboration 

A growing legion of futurists, like senior research associate at Harvard’s Labor and Worklife Program Aleksandra Przegalińska, study how humans and robots can collaborate, and specifically how machines can take on tedious or dangerous tasks for humans. 

Because the Ozmo technology is so new, she said it’s hard to fully evaluate, but the opportunity to shift human labor away from a dangerous field is appealing. 

She cites one example when machines, like the Moxi, were deployed to deliver medication to infected patients during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.  

“Certainly, in those areas where your health, your existence is at risk as a human, using a machine, a robot is something worth considering,” Przegalińska said. 

Skyline has been working on the robot since 2017 and the company raised $6.5 million in their pre-Series A funding, in addition to a grant from the Israeli government.

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Nintendo profit plunges 69% as it cuts forecast for sales of ageing Switch console

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Nintendo profit plunges 69% as it cuts forecast for sales of ageing Switch console

Mario poses at the “SUPER NINTENDO WORLD” welcome celebration at Universal Studios Hollywood on February 16, 2023 in Universal City, California.

Rodin Eckenroth | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

Nintendo on Tuesday cut forecast for Switch sales for its fiscal year ending March 2025 as demand wanes for its ageing console.

The Japanese gaming giant said it now expects to sell 12.5 million units of the Switch over the course of the period. That’s down from a previous forecast of 13.5 million units.

Nintendo has been contending with fading demand for its flagship Switch console, which is now more than seven years old.

Investors are waiting for news surrounding a successor to the Switch, which they hope will re-energize Nintendo’s gaming business. In the past, the company said that the Switch successor will be announced in its current fiscal year, which ends in March 2025.

Nintendo also cut full fiscal year forecasts for sales and operating profit. The company said it now expects sales of 1.28 trillion yen versus a previous forecast of 1.35 trillion yen. The operating profit outlook for the period was slashed from 400 billion yen to 360 billion yen.

Here’s how Nintendo did in its fiscal second quarter ended Sept. 30 versus LSEG estimates:

  • Revenue: 276.7 billion Japanese yen ($1.8 billion), compared with 273.34 billion yen expected.
  • Net profit: 27.7 billion yen, versus 48.06 billion yen expected.

Revenue fell 17% year-on-year. Net profit plunged just over 69% versus the same period last year.

Super Mario, Zelda boost fading

The Switch is Nintendo’s second best-selling console in history, behind the Nintendo DS. Despite the recent fall in sales, Nintendo has prolonged the console’s appeal for an extended period of time since its launch in 2017 by relying on its recognizable characters.

In its last fiscal year, Nintendo managed to reinvigorate sales of the Switch thanks to the the success of the “Super Mario Bros. Movie” and the highly anticipated release of the “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” game, which underscored the appeal of its iconic characters.

But that effect is fading.

On Tuesday, Nintendo noted the boost that the company received in the first half of its last fiscal year, but said “there were no such special factors in the first half of this fiscal year, and with Nintendo Switch now in its eighth year since launch, unit sales of both hardware and software decreased significantly year-on-year.”

Sales of the Switch totaled 4.72 units in the six months ended Sept. 30, compared with 6.84 million units in the same period of last year.

In the face of falling sales, Nintendo has tried to license out its intellectual property for use everywhere, from movies to theme parks. A new Super Mario movie is slated for release in 2026.

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Meta extends ban on new political ads past Election Day

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Meta extends ban on new political ads past Election Day

Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg plans to visit South Korea, scheduling key meetings during the trip, according to a statement by Meta on Wednesday, which did not provide further details. Reportedly, Zuckerberg is anticipated to meet with Samsung Electronics chairman Jay Y. Lee later this month to discuss AI chip supply and other generative AI issues, as per the South Korean newspaper Seoul Economic Daily, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter.

Alex Wong | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Meta extended its ban on new political ads on Facebook and Instagram past Election Day in the U.S.

The social media giant announced the political ads policy update on Monday, extending its ban on new political ads past Tuesday, the original end date for the restriction period.

Meta did not specify the day it will lift the restriction, saying only that the ad blocking will continue “until later this week.” The company did not say why it extended the political advertising restriction period.

The company announced in August that any political ads that ran at least once before Oct. 29 would still be allowed to run on Meta’s services in the final week before Election Day. Other political ads will not be allowed to run.

Organization with eligible ads will have “limited editing capabilities” while the restriction is still in place, Meta said. Those advertisers will be allowed to make scheduling, budgeting and bidding-related changes to their political ads, Meta said.

Meta enacted the same policy in 2020. The company said the policy is in place because “we recognize there may not be enough time to contest new claims made in ads.”

Google-parent Alphabet announced a similar ad policy update last month, saying it would pause ads relating to U.S. elections from running in the U.S. after the last polls close on Tuesday. Alphabet said it would notify advertisers when it lifts the pause.

Nearly $1 billion has been spent on political ads over the last week, with the bulk of the money spent on down-ballot races throughout the U.S., according to data from advertising analytics firm AdImpact.

Watch: Tech still investing big in AI development despite few breakout products.

Tech still investing big in AI development despite few breakout products

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Jeff Bezos and OpenAI invest in robot startup Physical Intelligence at $2.4 billion valuation

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Jeff Bezos and OpenAI invest in robot startup Physical Intelligence at .4 billion valuation

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, attends the 54th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, January 18, 2024 (L), and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos speaks during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, Britain, November 2, 2021.

Reuters

Physical Intelligence, a robot startup based in San Francisco, has raised $400 million at a $2.4 billion post-money valuation, the company confirmed Monday to CNBC.

Investors included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, OpenAI, Thrive Capital and Lux Capital, a Physical Intelligence spokesperson said. Khosla Ventures and Sequoia Capital are also listed as investors on the company’s website.

Physical Intelligence’s new valuation is about six times that of its March seed round, which reportedly came in at $70 million with a $400 million valuation. Its current roster of employees includes alumni of Tesla, Google DeepMind and X.

The startup focuses on “bringing general-purpose AI into the physical world,” per its website, and it aims to do this by developing large-scale artificial intelligence models and algorithms to power robots. The startup spent the past eight months developing a “general-purpose” AI model for robots, the company wrote in a blog post. Physical Intelligence hopes that model will be the first step toward its ultimate goal of developing artificial general intelligence. AGI is a term used to describe AI technology that equals or surpasses human intellect on a wide range of tasks.

The news comes days after OpenAI launched a search feature within ChatGPT, its viral chatbot, that positions the AI startup to better compete with search engines like GoogleMicrosoft‘s Bing and Perplexity. Last month, OpenAI also closed its latest funding round at a valuation of $157 billion.

Physical Intelligence’s vision is that one day users can “simply ask robots to perform any task they want, just like they can ask large language models (LLMs) and chatbot assistants,” the startup wrote in the blog post. In case studies, Physical Intelligence details how its tech could allow a robot to do laundry, bus tables or assemble a box.

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