At this beginning of the year 2020, I’MTech takes a look back at 10 of the most noteworthy articles from the past year. What scientific topics made headlines at the close of the 2010s and the dawn of the 2020s? A look at this pivotal year, in which unsurprisingly, AI and the environment feature prominently… but not exclusively!
#1 Some people are paid fractions of cents to train algorithms. On social media sites, we all do it for free
From personal data to artificial intelligence: who benefits from our clicking?
#2 It’s leaving the beach and coming to cities. After air and water, sand is the third most-used resource for human beings.
Sand, an increasingly scarce resource that needs to be replaced
#3 Do we want AI to be effective or to be able to understand what it’s doing?
#4 In rivers or on land, some plants are our best allies in the fight against heavy metals.
#5 Composite materials offer many advantages: weight, lifespan, mechanical performance etc. But for the time being, they also have one major drawback: their ability to be recycled.
#6 We no longer simply buy a product, but the services that go with it too. Companies clearly understand this.
#7 Water stress, impact on biodiversity, natural land transformation etc. Calculating the environmental footprint of a product or service is no simple task.
#8 Between optimizing sales and helping consumers, how AI is slowly making its way into our supermarkets.
AI lends a hand to help large retailers win back their customers
#9 Autonomous cars will soon be on our roads. But we still have to get them to communicate with one another!
#10 Do mobile applications and web services really help patients live better with their illnesses?
Chronic disease: what does the Internet really change in patients’ lives?