Polymarket’s Rush to Grow at All Costs
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This episode is sponsored by NYU Langone Health. I think the data serves as really the nervous system for the health system. It allows us to see how we're doing, it allows us to see variation, it allows us to learn across the health system and then to figure out what interventions we should do.
This is Dr. Il Sung Cho, Chief Quality Officer for NYU Langone Health. At the break, hear more from him about how the health system is harnessing emerging tech to improve patient safety and outcomes.
Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Tuesday, September twenty second. I'm Isabel Bousquet, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal Leadership Institute. Landfill operators are facing an ongoing labor shortage. We're digging into what they hope could be the solution, remotely controlled and autonomous bulldozers. Then we're taking you inside our latest investigation into polymarket. And how the company's rush to grow left the door wide open for fraudsters. But first, at the Marana Regional Landfill near Tucson, Arizona, workers are regularly driving a 40-ton bulldozer. But these days, that's happening from the safety and comfort of a trailer hundreds of yards away. The site has become a proving ground for remote-controlled and autonomous machines, aimed at improving safety and reducing operating costs.
It's still early days for the technology, which could face more challenges as it scales out, but bulldozers could just be the beginning. WSJ's Bob Tita, who traveled to Tucson for a firsthand look, joins us now to share his insights on the latest in autonomous machinery. Bob, paint the picture for us. What was it like walking into this landfill?
It's huge. It's an enormous place. And being in Arizona, it's out in the desert, so it's just very dry and not a lot of vegetation, of course. You know, there's always big trucks that bring trash in from the um transfer stations in the Tucson area and they dump their trash there. So it's pretty much throughout the day pretty busy place.
And there are bulldozers, but now some of them are operating without somebody actually inside.
Yes, the bulldozer that spreads the trash is being remotely operated. They set up a Wi Fi network just at the landfill for this equipment. So you have these kind of portable Wi Fi towers that are connected to a trailer and of course the machine is connected to the network as well. And so the operator in the trailer can direct the machine in landfill.
And why are the landfill operators so interested in investing in this capability?
There's a couple reasons.
What are autonomous, remotely‑controlled bulldozers and why are landfills adopting them?
One is just it's becoming more and more difficult to get people who are skilled operators of heavy equipment like this. Turnover, particularly, you know, has been pretty high in recent years. And so that's a concern. Also, there's a shortage of operators because uh a lot of people who did this work work for years and years are retiring. And just like a lot of other professions, particularly in equipment operators, the uh number of people coming into the profession are smaller. So the idea ultimately would be that if you needed to you could have one person operate perhaps multiple pieces of equipment.
And so what companies are making these autonomous bulldozers and what other kind of equipment do they maybe have planned?
WM is using caterpillar equipment and Caterpillar has been working on this for a number of years. And they already do some economist equipment in big mines where trucks kinda run on a closed course without a driver. So they have been working on this for a number of years. Now they're extending it to other applications, particularly things like landfills and eventually construction sites as well.
The actual operators you talk to, how did they feel about this? Were they worried about ultimately being replaced by autonomous machines or were they just happy that they didn't have to sit in the cab anymore?
They're basically happy that they don't have to sit in a cab anymore. It's a much easier environment to spend all day working in instead of being jostled around in a cab.
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