the future of tech

Will Google’s Controversial LaMDA Help or Hinder Internet Discovery?

/ Fiona J McEvoy / 1 Comment

In his online Masterclass on the art of writing, renowned journalist Malcolm Gladwell explains the shortcomings of Google when it comes to research and discovery. “The very thing that makes you love Google is why Google is not that useful“, he chirps. To Gladwell, a Google search is but a dead-end when a true researcher wants to be led “somewhere new and unexpected“.

In juxtaposition to Google’s search engine stands ye olde library, which Gladwell calls the “physical version of the internet” (sans some of the more sophisticated smut…). In a library — should it be required — guidance is on-hand in the form of a librarian, and unlike the internet there is a delightful order to things that the writer likens to a good conversation. Discovery can be as simple as finding what books surround the book that inspired you…and following the trail. Gladwell elucidates: “The book that’s right next to the book is the book that’s most like it, and then the book that’s right next to that one is a little bit different, and by the time you get ten books away you’re getting into a book that’s in the same general area but even more different.”

There is something altogether more natural and relational about uncovering the new — and the forgotten — in the context of a library or a conversation. Hidden gems lay undisturbed, unlike popularity-ranked internet search results that spew out the obvious and the familiar.

Enter LaMDA AI.

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From Pandemic to Panopticon: Are We Habituating Aggressive Surveillance?

/ Fiona J McEvoy / 1 Comment

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In Shoshana Zuboff’s 2019 book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, she recalls the response to the launch of Google Glass in 2012. Zuboff describes public horror, as well as loud protestations from privacy advocates who were deeply concerned that the product’s undetectable recording of people and places threatened to eliminate “a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy and/or anonymity.” 

Zuboff describes the product:

Google Glass combined computation, communication, photography, GPS tracking, data retrieval, and audio and video recording capabilities in a wearable format patterned on eyeglasses. The data it gathered — location, audio, video, photos, and other personal information — moved from the device to Google’s servers.

At the time, campaigners warned of a potential chilling effect on the population if Google Glass were to be married with new facial recognition technology, and in 2013 a congressional privacy caucus asked then Google CEO Larry Page for assurances on privacy safeguards for the product. 

Eventually, after visceral public rejection, Google parked Glass in 2015 with a short blog announcing that they would be working on future versions. And although we never saw the relaunch of a follow-up consumer Glass, the product didn’t disappear into the sunset as some had predicted. Instead, Google took the opportunity to regroup and redirect, unwilling to turn its back on the chance of harvesting valuable swathes of what Zuboff terms “behavioral surplus data”, or cede this wearables turf to a rival. 

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The Evolution of Human-Centered Tech @ Last Month’s CES 2020

/ Fiona J McEvoy / Leave a comment

An edited version of this article appeared on the H+K Strategies website earlier this month. File:Ces-consumer-electronics-show-las-vegas-greg-bulla.jpg

The dust has now settled after the madness of the world’s biggest annual tech fest, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, NV. Since the show’s kick-off in early January, a parade of weird and wonderful new devices have dominated tech news and bylines; from lab produced pork to RollBot, Charmin’s robotic savior for those “stranded on the commode without a roll.”

The event itself really isn’t for the faint-hearted. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of companies vying to embed their (often ridiculous) tech gadgetry into our lives – both at work and at play. There is, of course, lots of money to be made from finding that elusive sweet spot; the point at which problem-solving, convenience, and affordability converge.

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Eurobots: Regulation rules in the European AI scene

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The following is a guest post by Erin Green, PhD, a Brussels-based AI ethics and public engagement specialist. For more on the European scene, check out my recent interview with Hill + Knowlton Strategies “Creating Ethical Rules for AI.”

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When it comes to the global AI stage, China and the US consistently grab headlines as their so-called arms race heats up, while countries like Japan and South Korea lead the way in innovation and social receptivity. Europe, though, is taking a slightly different approach – partly by choice, partly by design.

The 28 countries (Brexit pending) that make up the economic and political bloc of the European Union each have a stake in the AI game. Bigger, richer players like the UK (pledging 1000 places for PhDs in AI) and Germany (€3 billion invested in the coming years) are sinking eye-widening resources into keeping up with the proverbial Joneses. Smaller nations, like Malta and its not-quite 500,000 people, are turning to foreign investment and partnerships to guarantee a spot in the major leagues.

Somewhat independent of these interests, the EU itself is trying to carve out space in terms of regulatory prowess and in bringing coherence to a rather chaotic European AI scene. Think this is a bureaucratic exercise with not much reach or consequence beyond the Berlaymont? Just remember all those GDPR emails that clogged up your inbox sometime around May 25, 2018. The EU has real regulatory reach.

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Sure, AI can be creative, but it will never possess genius

/ Fiona J McEvoy / Leave a comment

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Sarah Bernhardt plays Hamlet, London 1899

“What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, 
That he should weep for her?” 

The close of Act II Scene ii, and Hamlet questions how the performers in a play about the siege of Troy are able to convey such emotion – feel such empathy – for the stranger queen of an ancient city. 

The construct here is complex. A play within a play, sparking a key moment of introspection, and ultimately self doubt. It is no coincidence that in this same work we find perhaps the earliest use of the term “my mind’s eye,” heralding a shift in theatrical focus from traditions of enacted disputes, lovers passions, and farce, to more a more nuanced kind of drama that issues from psychological turmoil.

Hamlet is generally considered to be a work of creative genius. For many laboring in the creative arts, works like this and those in its broader category serve as aspirational benchmarks. Indelible reminders of the brilliant outlands of human creativity. 

Now, for the first time in our history, humans have a rival in deliberate acts of aesthetic creation. In the midst of the avalanche of artificial intelligence hype comes a new promise – creative AI; here to relieve us of burdensome tasks including musical, literary, and artistic composition.  

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Tech for Humans, Part 1: The Paradox of Human Centered Design

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YouTheData.com is delighted to feature a two-part guest post by Andrew Sears. Andrew is passionate about emerging technologies and the future we’re building with them. He’s driven innovation at companies like IBM, IDEO, and Genesis Mining with a focus on AI, cloud, and blockchain products. He serves as an Advisor at All Tech is Human and will complete his MBA at Duke University in 2020. You can keep up with his work at andrew-sears.com.

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“Ideate.” “Prototype.” “Iterate.” “Empathize.” These words have become mainstays in the modern tech product team’s vocabulary, thanks in part to human-centered design.

Human-centered design is an approach to product design that is based on building empathy with the people who will be using the product. The assumption is that, by understanding the needs, preferences, and desires of the end user, the product team can build a product that customers will find both useful and easy to use. Within this mindset, great products are those that integrate seamlessly into the user’s life and help them to accomplish tasks more efficiently.

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Healthbots: the new caregivers

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This article by Fiona J McEvoy (YouTheData.com) was originally posted on All Turtles.

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Movie tickets bought, travel booked, customer service problems resolved. Chatbots perform so many tasks that the best ones blend into the background of everyday transactions and are often overlooked. They’re being adopted seamlessly by one industry after the next, but their next widespread application poses unique challenges.

Now healthbots are poised to become the new frontline for triage, replacing human medical professionals as the first point of contact for the sick and the injured.

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Making AI in our own image is a mistake

/ Fiona J McEvoy / 1 Comment

This article by Fiona J McEvoy (YouTheData.com) was originally posted on All Turtles.

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When the Chinese news agency Xinhua demonstrated an AI anchorperson, the reaction of the internet was predictably voluble. Was this a gimmick or a sign of things to come? Could the Chinese government literally be turning to artificial puppets to control the editorial content of the country’s news channels? Are we careening towards a future where the humans and humanoid bots are indistinguishable?

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AI needs cooperation, not an arms race

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This article by Fiona J McEvoy (YouTheData.com) was originally posted on All Turtles.

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Writing in the New York Times recently, venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee signaled an important, oncoming change in the way we think about artificial intelligence. We are graduating, he cautioned, from an age of discovery and vision into a more practical era of implementation.

Lee is promoting his new book, titled A.I. Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, and he suggests that this transition from lab to launchpad may naturally privilege Chinese advantages—like data abundance and government investment—above the research capabilities and “freewheeling intellectual environment” of the U.S.

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Trying on wearables

/ Fiona J McEvoy / Leave a comment

This article by Fiona J McEvoy (YouTheData.com) was originally posted on All Turtles.

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The dramatic failures of Google Glass and Snapchat Spectacles demonstrated the countless challenges faced by wearable technologies. Beyond the ubiquitous activity trackers and smartwatches, wearable consumer products have yet to yield a mass-market success. Though the idea of wearable tech and human-technology synergy still gets marketers excited, product designers have yet to hit upon a breakout device that will prove as popular and indispensable as blue jeans. Still, the allure of developing such a product remains irresistible.

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