Business

The benefits and risks of artificial intelligence took center stage during a panel discussion at a regional technology forum last week at Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold, Maryland. During the Maryland Tech Council Chesapeake Regional Chapter’s Emerging Industries Forum on Wednesday, panelists expressed bullish enthusiasm on how AI might become a new powerful economic engine for our region. But there was also a great deal of concern about the nature of the technology itself.

Gino Palma’s longtime dream to open a restaurant in Baltimore will soon come true. The owner of Facci Ristorante, which has locations at the Maple Lawn development in Fulton and Ellicott City’s Turf Valley, signed a lease last week at 414 Light St. for a third location, with plans to open next year. The Italian restaurant will replace the shuttered vegan eateries from California chef Matthew Kenney, Double Zero and Liora, which closed earlier this year.

John Varvatos walked into a conference room at Under Armour’s new Baltimore Peninsula offices last week sporting a very simple black hoodie. The new chief design officer for the sportswear maker had the hoodie created after seeing some of Under Armour’s new performance fabric. Though the hoodie is plain with no logos or other markings, it quickly became the most wanted product in the halls of the company.

Media company Sinclair may be best known for its empire of television stations and local news programming across the United States, its founders’ conservative bent and its recent failed foray into regional sports network ownership. Now, officials say the Hunt Valley-based company’s future will become more tied to industries outside broadcast. Instead of buying more television stations, the company is shifting its investment strategy to acquire growing, nonbroadcast businesses, Sinclair President and CEO Chris Ripley said in a recent interview.

Tracking drones and robots with pinpoint precision in an open air-land lab; watching students build and test their prototypes in a large project assembly space; creating an autonomous school of robotic fish in a water tunnel – it’s all in a day’s work for the people who study, teach and conduct research in the Southern Maryland Autonomous Research and Technology (SMART) Building, on the campus of the University System of Maryland Southern Maryland (USMSM).

The University of Maryland recently acquired the College Park headquarters of a scientific group that last year inked a big lease in downtown D.C. The American Center for Physics Inc. sold its 107,274-square-foot home at 1 Physics Ellipse last month for $35.5 million, according to public records and the University of Maryland.

Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport has added several new or returning flights this year with more planned going into 2024 as airlines change offerings to meet the post-pandemic leisure travel boom. BWI added at least five routes so far this year, with at least one announced going into 2024. This year’s new routes range from tropical destinations to returned services across the country, many of which had been halted since 2020.