Evidence receipt / commitment
Published · transcript-backedAlain Bertaud: commitment
25 Sept 2019 Conversations with Tyler Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People
“Some are probably very interesting, but it is at a stage where it’s only if it’s replicated at a city scale that we will know if these gadgets are really interesting or not.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Alain Bertaud
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- commitment
- Recorded
- 25 Sept 2019
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
Transcript context
…Google Sidewalk Labs is trying to build a smart neighborhood in Toronto. This may or may not happen. For or against? Well, I have nothing against, say, real estate operations done by Google in Toronto. I have a problem when they say that on a piece of land which is basically the size of Washington Square, they are going to solve a housing problem, poverty, transport, pollution. I have a problem with that. Again, a bit like the Amazon thing, the salesmanship was terrible. If they were saying, “Look, we are going to do a real estate operation. We are going to monitor what is a real cost of, for instance, building five-story building in wood whether it makes sense or not.” That’s fine. Marie-Agnes and I visited it a few months ago, and I see a lot of gadgets. They call it smart. I call that gadgets. Some are interesting. Some are probably very interesting, but it is at a stage where it’s only if it’s replicated at a city scale that we will know if these gadgets are really interesting or not. So I think they oversold it, and it’s going to probably blow in their face. Will facial recognition come to major US cities? I don’t mean in the 7-Eleven but done by the government on public streets.…
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