I use a lot of AirTags. One of them, located (I believed) at my son's house in Silicon Valley, only checked in to the network every once in a while. When I would go to find the physical tag, it couldn't be found on the network. But then, when I would be in Europe or somewhere, it would randomly check in to tell me the battery was low. A few months ago, I tried to find it using the "Directions" feature of Find My, only to have it lead me down the street. I thought it was hallucinating.
But today, I saw that it recently popped up on the network, so I used the directions app to track it. Again, the app led me down the street, then across the street. I used the "Play Sound" feature to make the AirTag beep. And I found it! It was half buried in leaves where it had been exposed to the elements for a year.
How did it get there? Well, the best guess is that neighborhood kids were playing with it — kids whose family moved out of the neighborhood nine months ago.
The 2024 summer Olympics will showcase a new world of AI-generated fakes, advanced cyberthreats and the rise of AI-powered defense. Read my column at Computerworld.com.
Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and now OpenAI are all known to be working on AI that can "think," make decisions and change course in pursuit of goals. Read all about it in my MACHINE SOCIETY newsletter.
Now that Amazon is making moves to lead in artificial intelligence with next-generation technology, we can no longer ignore it. Read my column at Computerworld.
I got to be a guest on This Week in Tech with host Leo Laporte and fellow guests Denise Howell and Harry McCracken.
We talked about the Samsung event, the FTC's NGL ban, the AT&T breach and much, much more!
The cyberattack landscape has seen monumental shifts and enormous growth in the past decade or so. Here's my attempt at a global, 10-year reckoning. Read my article at SecurityIntelligence.
The two biggest pain points for remote workers trying to get their jobs done in faraway places have been erased by innovative new products that should make it even easier to work from anywhere. Read my column at Computerworld.com.
The AI-washing phenomenon is built on delusion. It’s built on the delusion that people want machines creating and controlling everything, which they don’t. It’s based on the delusion that adding AI to something automatically improves it, which it doesn’t. And it’s based on the delusion that employing people represents a failure of technology, which it doesn’t.
I think I speak for all of us in the technology industry, the technology customer community, and the tech press when I say to Silicon Valley: Stop gaslighting everybody about AI.
Humans are cultural animals, which means that we learn from each other and pass that knowledge on to others. Acquiring skills — from folding laundry to cooking to boxing — involves a teacher explaining while demonstrating. We learn by observing others.
Thanks to generative AI, robots are also gaining the ability to learn the way humans do — by watching YouTube videos. Read all about it on my MACHINE SOCIETY newsletter.
GPS jamming is creating demand for cheap drones that use AI to navigate, target and attack. It's only a matter of time before this will become a worldwide danger. Read my opinion column at Computerworld.com.
Apple and Sightful are making the world safe for giant virtual-screen laptops. As a big-screen loving nomad who lives out of a backpack, I can't wait. Read my newsletter, MACHINE SOCIETY!
The company’s value is so high because of its dominance in AI chips, surpassing even Apple. Now the company is aiming to transform a much larger $50 trillion market: ‘Physical AI.’ Read my opinion column at computerworld.com.
Some of the wines come from 150-year-old vines.
In 2011 Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, asserted in a Wall Street Journal essay that “software is eating the world.” He was right, of course. But in this decade it’s AI software, specifically, that’s eating our world. And very soon, AI software will eat the smartphone world, too. Read how in my Computerworld column.
Real-world avatars, CyberTruck campers, 3D webcams, LEGO Macs, AI binoculars and more! Read it on MACHINE SOCIETY!
Why make anything when AI can make it better, faster and cheaper? Read all about it on Machine Society!
Michael Krasny interviewed me on his wonderful podcast, Grey Matter. He asked me about the Gastronomad lifestyle and about the cultural impact of AI, plus about my newsletter, Machine Society.
Listen to the interview here.
Check out the shiny new podcast Inside A.I., hosted by Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis and, on this episode, guested by me! The timing couldn't be better, as the podcast was recorded after two of the most consequential announcements in the history of AI, of course, by OpenAI and Google. This is a must-listen, must-watch podcast episode!
Listen and watch here!
Become a patron of the show here!
I’ve been predicting that a massive AI glasses industry is about to take off and take over. It will probably happen next year. And the new trend in multimodal AI with video as one of the modes should convince everyone how big the AI glasses market will be. Read my opinion column at Computerworld.com.
Join host Leo Laporte and guests Paris Martineau, Sam Abuelsamid and me on TWiT where we tackle solar storms, Tesla chaos, Apple AI, Google failures, TikTok risks, messaging mayhem, Sony switcheroos and much, much more!!
Perplexity AI is not unique. It’s simply the most popular and probably best in the category of tools that combine search with large language model (LLM) chatbots. (I previously recommended another in this space, is phind.com.)
The leading brands will soon converge on Perplexity’s space. OpenAI is rumored to be building a search engine. Apple’s Siri is thought to be getting the addition of AI. Bing already uses ChatGPT. And Perplexity-like startups abound — for example, Subtl.ai explicitly positions its tools as a kind of “enterprise Perplexity AI” that keeps corporate data private (Perplexity has its own enterprise offering, called Perplexity Enterprise).
It’s likely that within a year, the AI chatbots will have search, the search engines will have AI and the voice assistants will have both search and AI.
This strikes me as an improvement all around.
The translation is: "DO NOT DIRTY THE WALLS" and "CLEANLINESS IS A GREAT SIGN OF CIVILIZATION."
"Any day now, an industry will emerge where your face and body are scanned, your voice is recorded and your communications are fed into the system, so it knows how you use words. From that point, a virtual version of you can leave high-resolution video messages from a simple command you give to your AI glasses." Read my opinion column at Computerworld.com.
Researchers have created a new, never-seen-before kind of malware they call the “Morris II” worm, which uses popular AI services to spread itself, infect new systems and steal data. The worm demonstrates the potential dangers of AI security threats and creates a new urgency around securing AI models. Read all about it in my SecurityIntelligence report.
A grant posted by the US State Department wants to counter Russian disinformation in video games through video games. Here's a summary from the grant:
"Leveraging the popularity and penetration of video games in Eastern Europe, the implementer will develop an eSports program at American Spaces in Ukraine. eSports athletes will need professional training to form a talent pipeline to professional teams in Ukraine. In tandem with traditional eSports training, these athletes will receive counter disinformation/conflict resolution training to confront foreign propaganda and disinformation in competitive online gaming spaces. The project will culminate with an eSports tournament and coalition-building event on the sidelines of the tournament."
Is this a good idea or a bad idea?
This stuff turns into pulque, the most delightful, mildly alcoholic beverage.
Two investors want to re-invent news. And it’s the worst journalism idea I’ve heard in a long time.
Nathaniel Brooks Horwitz and Sam Koppelman — both 27 years old — are creating a newsroom that will be monetized by investments based on “scoops” produced by the newsroom, according to exclusive reporting by the Financial Times.
In other words, their investment firm, the $100 million hedge fund Hunterbrook Capital, is using journalists to write stories designed to affect the stock market. They’ll buy or sell stock based on those “market-moving” stories before the market moves — before other investors know about the stories — thereby profiting.
Read it all on Mike's List.
Yeah, I'm in Oaxaca again. My wife, Amira, went out with friends while I slaved away in the information mines. But she brought me this Tlayuda from the food vendor down the street -- tlayudas are what Oaxacans eat instead of tacos. And mezcal here is not only a great idea. It's the law.