The 2017 Consumer Electronics Show came with its share of Internet of Things devices. Smart washing machines, coffee makers, air fryers, and even internet-connected toasters were on display. But Laurent Canneva noticed one glaring omission: There were no smart trash cans.

And collecting data from trash receptacles, Canneva realized, could solve a genuine problem: Organizations don’t have an accurate way to measure how much trash they produce. Trash output from an office building, for instance, can typically only be measured in very rough terms—by the truckload or the dumpsterful. That can make it hard for organizations to track waste data for sustainability reports or to earn zero-waste certification.

Canneva and his friend, engineer Laurent Meunier, founded Spare-It to address this problem. Spare-It’s system consists of smart scales, sensors, and cameras installed below and inside trash and recycling bins that continually upload waste data to an online platform. Weights from the scales let organizations know how much trash people are throwing away in pounds or kilograms. Canneva is now CEO of the company.

How Spare-It is using AI to solve a novel problem can be a useful guide for CFOs looking to incorporate technology into their processes.

Click here for more on how Spare-It is incorporating tech into its products.—CV

What does Mark Zuckerberg love? His AR glasses that tell him how to behave like a human, gold chains, manosphere podcasts, and smoking meat.

And what does Mark Zuckerberg hate? Meetings and managing people, apparently.

Last week, at a fireside chat during Stripe’s annual Sessions conference in San Francisco, Stripe co-founder John Collison, the moderator, asked the tech mogul for “the Mark Zuckerberg management book,” or where his leadership style might “differ from the orthodoxy.”

The line of questioning came up, in part, because of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s appearance at the same conference last year, where he outlined some of his unconventional leadership decisions, like managing 60 direct reports and personally maintaining zero work-life balance. (Fun!)

But Huang is Huang, and Zuckerberg is Zuckerberg.

To keep reading what Zuckerberg thinks of managing people, click here.—CV

It’s an AI professional’s world, and we’re just living in it.

AI is all the rage in the job market right now. An analysis by CBRE found that AI job listings comprised 14.3% of all US tech talent jobs as of June 2024, an uptick from 8.8% in late 2019.

However, demand for talent with ripe AI skills currently outweighs the supply. IT Brew previously reported that 62% of executives blamed a lack of talent and skills for their company’s inability to make progress on AI initiatives, despite AI and GenAI being top tech priorities last year.

Fortunately, a recent G42 report may shed some light on how companies can attract and secure top AI talent in the industry.

The blueprint. What are AI pros looking for in a gig? Of the 750 US-based AI professionals surveyed by G42, 70% said job security was “very important” when it came to long-term career satisfaction.

Keep reading IT Brew's story about what AI talent wants.—BM

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