To the Stars with Data: February 6 2022
US Insect protein markets, OpenAI (kind) fixed GPT-3, world's first space sustainability rating, and more
Hello Datanauts!
Can you believe it’s already February? 😱 But don’t fret; we still have 90% of the year left! Don’t let the time go to waste.
This week, I take a deep dive into insect protein and the US insect protein market, OpenAI’s GPT-3 updates (GPT-3 is a powerful AI model that can write almost indistinguishably from a human), the world’s first space sustainability rating, and a number of other pieces of awesome Earth and space news.
Now, let’s go to the stars with data!
Thought-Provoking Data Viz
🐜 US insect protein market expected to grow 33.2% annually from 2021 to 2028
Quick hits. Based on trends and forecasts, Grand View Research predicts the US insect protein market to expand 33.2% annually from 2021 to 2028. It predicts the global market to increase more slowly (yet still quickly) at 27.4% annually. In the US, there are a number of reasons for this growth, but they primarily attribute it to the increased use of insects in animal feed and as sustainable protein sources for human consumption.
Digging deeper. Insects can be an admirably sustainable source of protein and other nutrients, which is why I’m even talking about them in the first place. The consensus is that insects require FAR less land, water, and feed to produce protein than other animal-based protein sources. Let’s dig into the numbers for crickets:
Crickets are 12x more efficient in converting feed to meat than cattle, at least 4 times more efficient than pigs, and up to twice as efficient as chickens.
*Crickets require ~10-15x less land than beef, ~4x less land than pigs and 3x less land than chickens
*Crickets require 30,000x less water than beef, 3,500x less water than pigs, and 2,300x less water than chickens
*Crickets emit 2,850x fewer greenhouse gases (GHGs) than beef, 1,130x fewer than pigs, and 300x fewer than chickens
*Note: it’s difficult to find reputable sources with all this information in one place, but this is close to what I found by looking through multiple sources.
Earth News
🧠 OpenAI unveils InstructGPT to address issues with GPT-3
Quick hits. GPT-3—an AI that understands and writes almost as well as a human—has a number of issues, most notably of which is its use of violent and offensive language. To begin to address these issues, OpenAI trained InstructGPT using human input (where people provide ratings on outputs to indicate which are preferable) instead of just information found on the internet. For this process, toxic and false statements were voted down while true and fact-based statements were voted up. In addition to leading InstructGPT to be less offensive and dishonest, InstructGPT also runs more quickly than GPT-3; researchers more often preferred the responses from the model trained on 1.3 billion parameters (vs. 175 billion parameters).
Digging deeper. For those of you wondering what GPT-3 is and why I’m talking about it, just think of all the advertisements you’ve seen for “AI-assisted writing tools” that literally write things for you when given a prompt. Most of them probably use GPT-3. GPT-3 has a huge offensive language problem (Duh! They trained it on data pulled from the internet.). For instance, the most-favored words for almost any religion include insults. Although InstructGPT advertises less offensive language, the difference is only slight when compared to GPT-3. The improvements from GPT-3 to InstructGPT primarily focus on truthful and fact-based statements (GPT3 had a tendency to literally just make things up) and the efficiency of the model.
If you want to dig in, here’s the nerdy version of the article published by OpenAI.
In other Earth news…
🧠 Neuralink posts a clinical trial director position, hinting that a clinical trial for its brain implant is in the works. There’s a bit of a controversy on this topic: one of Neuralink’s primary missions is to aid those with severe spinal cord injuries in walking again.
Some claim that Neuralink is looking to profit off of disadvantaged members of society
Others claim that technologies developed by Neuralink will offer those with severe spinal cord injuries a brighter life
🚢 Maersk unveils an offshore charging buoy to limit ship idling emissions. They aim to remove up to 5.5m tons CO2 from the air within 5 years of commercial rollout.
Space News
🌿 World’s first space sustainability rating launched
Quick hits. In a world-first, a sustainability rating for space exploration is being launched. The World Economic Forum is “going live” in early 2022 with the rating system and its participation is voluntary. The rating system takes into account “factors ranging from data sharing, ability to verify information, choice of orbit, measures taken to avoid collisions, plans to de-orbit satellites on completion of missions, and even how well they can be detected and identified from Earth”.
Digging deeper. Though participation in the rating is voluntary, a number of notable contributors—European Space Agency, MIT, and several companies—helped shape the rating, and many companies already indicated they’d participate once the rating is launched. The rating system is certainly a step in the right direction (especially in addressing the issue of space debris, which is a huge issue), but I’d personally like to see the rating also address emissions and other types of pollution produced through manufacturing, the transport of components on Earth, the rocket launch, and a spacecraft’s lifetime in space.
In other space news…
🤖 ExoMars is on track for a September launch and a June 2023 landing on Mars. The ExoMars mission, a joint venture between the European Space Agency and Roscosmos (Russia’s space agency), will search for atmospheric gases that could hint at active biological or geological processes on the red planet.
☄ NASA can now scan the entire night sky every 24 hours for potential asteroid impacts. The asteroid tracking system, ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System), recently added a telescope in South Africa and a telescope in Chile. This move is in line with other planetary defense efforts, including the DART mission.
🚀 SpaceX is planning 1 launch per week in 2022. This is up from a record-breaking 31 launches in 2021 and 26 launches in 2020. This would have been unthinkable a few decades ago and exemplifies the power of reusable launch equipment!
Future-Thinking Companies
🧱 ByFusion. They create construction bricks from hard-to-recycle plastic. Moreover, they sell the equipment to make the bricks—“Blockers”—so that municipalities and companies can do it too. Here’s an article about them if you want to learn more.
✈Bellweather Industries. Based in the UK, they plan to have their electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) vehicle on the market in 2028. I’m literally only including this because the design is super cool (there are so many other eVTOL vehicles out there); it looks like something Batman would use! I included a bonus video of it below.