Thoughts control Alexa while OpenAI's o1-preview 'excels'

Welcome to ZDNET’s Innovation Index, which identifies the most innovative developments in tech from the past week and ranks the top four, based on votes from our panel of editors and experts. Our mission is to help you identify the trends that will have the biggest impact on the future.

Google’s annual Made by Google product event dominates this week’s Index, but its success also caused some disagreement within ZDNET’s panel of voters. 

Also: Everything announced at Made by Google 2024

In first place this week is brain-computer interface company Synchron for allowing Amazon Alexa‘s network of home devices to be controlled by a user’s thoughts. The development comes just a few weeks after the company announced a similar capability for Apple Vision Pro. With the help of Synchron’s brain implant, a person with ALS directed Alexa by guiding a cursor using his thoughts instead of his voice or touch, one of which is commonly required to use most consumer tech, including home systems. Coming on the heels of Apple’s innovative work on hearing aids, the release from Synchron and Amazon continues a long-overdue trend toward boosting accessibility in tech. If this trend continues, millions of people could benefit from everyday conveniences, which bodes well for even more impactful upgrades down the line. 

Coming in second is OpenAI, whose storied new o1-preview model seems to be living up to expectations. Just a few months after its May GPT-4o release, the company launched a model that has “excelled” at ZDNET resident model tester David Gewirtz’s coding tests, providing detailed explanations of what it built — a significant step further than previous models. This detail is due to o1’s reasoning capabilities, which Gewirtz found a bit “chatty”, but the output is impressive nonetheless. The improvement could signal the advent of a much more reliable, accessible copilot for complex tasks — at least for ChatGPT Plus and Team users. 

At #3 is Meta for implementing a new guardrail: making teen Instagram accounts private by default. The social media platform’s new Teen Accounts will include protections for unsafe contact, bullying, and screen time for users under 18, although users 16 and up can adjust some settings with parental permission. Meta AI will evaluate an account’s activity to determine whether there’s a teen behind it before asking the user to verify their age and activating restrictions. Does that make getting pinged an insult or a compliment? 

Also: Want a programming job? Learn these three languages

Regardless, while there are pros and cons to instituting parental controls on tools kids use to express themselves and find community, the move will certainly shape social media use in future. 

Closing out the Index this week is United Airlines, which announced a free onboard Wi-Fi partnership with Starlink. The idea seems almost obvious: theoretically, satellites should be able to provide planes with a somewhat more consistent connection than land-based towers. The airline will start testing connectivity on planes early next year and hopes to extend the feature to its entire fleet. The proof will be in the in-flight streaming, but if it works, United could set a new (if long-overdue) standard for air travel that other airlines will hopefully follow.