“Conservation is Good for Business” Jessica Harvey, CEO of the Guy Harvey Foundation shares its mission and success in combining art and science for greater environmental conservation through ocean research and education before a September 24, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.

Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)

Ms. Harvey told the club that her father began his self-taught art career early. His teachers told him he’d never amount to anything if he didn’t pay attention in class and stop drawing Spitfires.

“Part of his success,” she said, “is that the art work is iconic. He started off with the inspiration from The Old Man and the Sea, and because he was a very visual person, he couldn't find an illustrated version of the story, and therefore set upon himself, at the age of 16, to do pen and ink drawings of the story. Took him a year to do, and he, at the time, did not explore the watercolors or the acrylic. That came later.”

Guy Harvey’s paintings of natural scenes now grace everything from museum walls to coffee cups, and part of the money made goes to fund the Guy Harvey Foundation.

“It's very hopeful. It's very uplifting, and because of that, more people want to be associated with the brand. It's branched out into people wanting Guy Harvey F-150s, so we had a licensing agreement with them. Norwegian Cruise Lines wanting to feature dad as the hull art, which they do on all of their ships. And it's not only become a feature of the art, but a billboard for conservation and support. You have things like Tervis, which is a well-regarded brand (of glasses and tumblers), you have TAG Heuer watches that wanted to feature his art on the face of the watch. It goes on to all sorts of different things.”

She said that her father’s art is so realistic because of the efforts he makes to understand the environment.

“He really makes an effort to study the animal and its natural habitat, but also learn more about it to support its conservation. He is not, as he says, he's not a tree hugger. He likes to fish. He likes to eat fish. But there are ways in which we need to move as a society to support sustainable use of our resources, and that's what he's about.”

She pointed out the importance of water to Florida’s economy.

• 52-million recreational anglers in Florida, $140-billion to the economy
• 100-million Americans boat annually, $230-billion
• Boating and fishing employ thousands of Floridians

The Guy Harvey Foundation began a relationship with Nova Southeastern University in 1999 to do research on pelagic fish – those that live in open waters – including sharks and billfish.

“Dr. Mahmoud Shivji is the director of the Nova Guy Harvey Research Institute based at Nova Southeastern University, and
he's an ecologist, but also geneticist, and he has helped with complicated studies on fish ID, because there's a lot of fish fraud that takes place in the States. Unfortunately, endangered species, his group was one of the first to find to account for the number of shark fins that are caught to support the shark fin trade, which is. Is upwards of 73 million at the time.”

To date, the Foundation has had 176 peer-reviewed scientific papers published which aid conservation efforts. They are supporting... (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/) A TeleDirections podcast

“How Autonomous Trucking Will Deliver the Future” - Nationally-recognized expert Lee White reveals how trials of autonomous vehicle trucking on public highways are progressing and the impact driverless trucks are expected to have on the cost of goods, the labor market, and roadway safety before an August 27, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.

Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)

Mr. White told the Club that autonomous vehicles (AVs) are already on the road. Out west, Waymo operates driverless taxis with more than 100,000 paid rides a week. The company will be expanding to 20 more states.In Florida, trucking will be a huge user of these driverless vehicles. Currently in the state:

• 130,000 trucking companies operate in Florida
• 1 in 18 people are employed in the industry
• 95% of all manufactured tonnage is brought to you by truck
• Trucking is the harbinger of the economy

The U.S. trucking industry represents $900-billion worth of transactions in interstate commerce across 140,000 terminals. Plus, we already see autonomous vehicles and machines working in other areas, especially since the COVID pandemic changed the supply chain.

“One of the things that helped these e-commerce companies, the Amazons, the UPS, DHL, Walmart, Target get through that is a lot of automation in their warehouses,” White said. “We have more million square-foot warehouses in our supply chain now than we ever had, and there’s a lot of automation. Amazon has over 14 different robots that are doing things, picking and unloading. We've got automated forklifts that are loading and unloading trucks. There's a lot of automation that's taking place inside the four walls, inside these facilities.”

He also pointed to the ways agriculture uses AVs.

“With John Deere, I believe there's 12 locations that they're testing right now for farming where the tractor has 24-hour capability to be able to farm. All the farmer needs to do is transport their tractor to the field, get it set up, get out of the cab, use their mobile phone and swipe to farm.”

In New York there are autonomous airport shuttles to take you to the terminal and then back to your car. They use autonomous machines as baggage carts and to load and unload cargo.

The military is also interested.

“In the last 10 years, they've had some military vehicles in some of our areas and supply chains that are running without drivers,” White said. “It's going to keep our men and women, our soldiers out of harm's way. You know, if there's a convoy of 20 trucks, there may be truck number 15 that's got a driver in it, and everything else is being autonomously driven.”

The trucking industry is still suffering a recession. There was an additional 4-5% reduction in business last May and June. The industry is also dealing with cost increases.

“If you look at the past three years, the wage cost has gone up from 56 cents per mile for a driver to 78 cents, a 38% increase in wages,” said White, a truck delivery driver earlier in his career... (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/) A TeleDirections podcast

“Development Trajectory of the Internet and AI – Will History Repeat Itself, or Just Rhyme?” WebMD founding COO Michael Heekin draws comparisons to the early days of the Internet to discuss the rapid dynamics of Artificial Intelligence and how it may impact business operations in the next ten years before a July 23, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.

Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)

Michael Heekin first took the Club on a nostalgic trip through the history of the internet featuring names such as America Online, the first internet connection many people had, Alta Vista and Yahoo, early search engines, and Netscape, an early browser.

He discussed how electrical energy demands from Artificial Intelligence (AI), various data centers, electric vehicles, among others will be huge. Previous Club speakers have addressed the energy needs as well.

“AI does not think like the human brain,” Heekin said. “Data is the key. It does not have instincts, emotions or consciousness.”

He said that as far as we know, AI is not capable of innovative thinking. He acknowledged that while AI might replace humans in performing some tasks, it’s power will be helping humans work more efficiently.

“It can take the works of the Beatles, and it can compose a new song and have Paul McCartney sing it,” he said. “It sounds like the Beatles because it’s got the same meter and the same interplay of instruments. But, it’s not capable of, and I’m going to guess never will have original thought. It’s not going to recreate a masterpiece like the complete works of Shakespeare or the City of God by Augustine.”

Heekin, who specializes in the management and development of growth-stage health and technology companies, talked about how we saw internet companies succeed and fail, and through the booms and busts, we’ve seen what they needed to succeed. AI companies will be similar in that there will be successes as well as dashed dreams and lost investment money.

“Access to good data and good data curation is what’s going to be really key,” he said. “Getting good data, curating it, and then stuffing it into the algorithm.”

He said that regulatory good faith is necessary for AI to grow, and he praised President Bill Clinton and U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich for their light regulation of the Internet in the 1990s.

“The government needs to not kill this thing in the crib. It has great potential for good, and great, great potential for threats. But that’s the same with a lot of things, wi-fi, life in general. The genie’s out of the bottle. If it’s not AI, it will be something else.”

He also looked at social media and regulation as a model for AI.

“Social media is like giving kids a pack of cigarettes. It’s clear AI is going to need some regulation, but it should be ex-post, not in advance. People in Washington don’t have a monopoly on good sense.”

He said AI will be a commodity product.

“There will be some wrinkles to it, but it will be a commodity. We will have access to AI, but most AI companies will not own the AI algorithms. Thay may own developments of it. They may have prompt engineers that can tell the AI algorithm what to do, but they will not own the algorithm lock stock and barrel.”

The public domain is... (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/) A TeleDirections podcast