No, Data Is Not the New Oil
Proposals to “pay” users for the value of their data don’t reflect how internet giants like Facebook and Google really operate.
Proposals to “pay” users for the value of their data don’t reflect how internet giants like Facebook and Google really operate.
As artificial intelligence driven facial recognition systems blur the lines between privacy and security and can culminate in a surveillance state, is this really the future that we want to build?
These companies use functional, if decidedly unglamorous, types of AI. The future of AI will be more of the same–not far-flung fantasies, like humanoid robots and machine consciousness.
Source: Why Amazon, Apple, Google are the world’s biggest companies
While many artists have some serious moral quandaries about driving their fans to YouTube given Google’s suspect data practices, Chris Castle here looks at why Amazon is in fact a far guiltier culprit.
Source: Amazon, Google & The Morality Of Driving Fans To Big Tech – hypebot
A new crop of websites shows the disturbing potential of deepfake technology. The sites present pictures of faces, cats and buildings that are completely fake but look incredibly real. One of the site’s creators says even people without computer programming experience can use freely available tools to create fake pictures in a couple of hours. The Uber engineer behind another one of the sites says he made the site to “raise public awareness” about the new AI technology.
Source: Deepfake tech is being used to create fictitious faces, cats, and Airbnbs – Business Insider
Moore’s Law, one of the fundamental laws indicating the exponential progress in the tech industry, especially electronic engineering, has been slowing down lately (since 2005, to be more precise), and has led many in this sector to believe this law to no longer hold true. That was, until Artificial Intelligence joined the arena! Since then, the game changed, and Moore’s law is slowly being revived.
Source: Moore’s Law is dying. Here’s how AI is bringing it back to life!
How AI is providing a competitive edge to digital marketing agencies
Source: Artificial Intelligence: The Holy Grail of Digital Marketing
Armed with this confidence, in the years since Y2K, we have created more and more complex networks and systems to enhance, guide, or even take over many facets of our daily lives. Whereas in 1999, many aspects of our day-to-day living remained offline, today little is left untouched by computer systems, networks, and code: Talking to friends and family, reading a book, listening to music, buying clothes or food, driving a car, flying from place to place — all of these activities depend on the network. Increasingly, the network extends to devices that, in 1999, were not considered to have much technological potential: household appliances like refrigerators or thermostats.
Now, we’re discovering what a false sense of security we’ve created. Along with it should come the realization of just how little we understand about the programs that permeate our lives and the networks that link them. Unlike 20 years ago, we appear less and less capable of predicting what will go wrong, or of stopping it before it does.
Source: We’re Finally Learning the Lesson of Y2K — and It’s Too Late
In internet land and our digital life, few stories over the past few months have been so epic and persuasive as Fortnite’s growing popularity. Netflix famously said in January, 2019 that Fortnite was a bigger competitor for attention than Hulu or HBO.
Source: The Rise of Fortnite is the Future of Gaming – FutureSin – Medium
Despite waves of privacy concerns, Facebook has a powerful grip on us all. The ubiquity of the platform and the time invested in building connections deters people from leaving and in turn deters would-be rivals from building alternative platforms. Their scale and success has us locked in. This success has an Achilles heel though — and it’s your mom.
Users of Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant conceptualize them in one of 3 ways: an interface, a personal assistant, or a brain. Frequent users are less likely to push the interaction limits of these AI systems than new users.
Today anyone with a computer and access to the internet can build a website using tools far more powerful than Dreamweaver from two decades ago. But these GUI-based tools have extended far beyond static sites to fully functional applications.
The leaders in artificial intelligence of facial recognition; Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon or Google? Think again.
Source: Chinese Facial Recognition Will Take over the World in 2019
Testing out solutions is a core part of the design process, and on the web, that often happens in the form of A/B testing: Designers show one group of users design A, another group of users design B, and measure which gets closer to a desired outcome. And it’s not just layouts that get A/B tested–these experiments determine everything from the headlines we read to the colors we see. But as a new paper discusses, there can be ethical issues with A/B testing.
Source: A/B testing rules the web. That could be a serious problem
Right now, it looks like the near future will see every major dating app ending up in the same hands, just one of the many stories of industry consolidation we’re witnessing in what antitrust expert Tim Wu has called the second Gilded Age, which is maybe abstractly scary — but more tangibly so when you think about Facebook as the only company that could possibly stop it.
Source: Tinder parent company Match Group acquires Hinge – Vox
The feature will ‘come to everyone only when Google is satisfied that it’s ready’
Source: Google is letting some users test its AR navigation feature for Google Maps – The Verge
Cashierless stores, like Amazon Go, have great potential to shake up the brick-and-mortar landscape. According to GPShopper, 48% of US internet users believe scan-and-go technology would make shopping easier. And 43% would rather try scan-and-go than wait in a checkout line. Respondents said they’d be most interested in scanning groceries, home goods and fashion items.
Source: Are Scan-and-Go Stores the Future of Retail? – eMarketer Trends, Forecasts & Statistics
Tech workers are using company mission statements to hold their CEOs accountable.
Source: The False Promise of Silicon Valley’s Quest to Save the World | The New Republic
It may have worked for AT&T decades ago, but today there’s little to no upside for brands to make earnest predictions.
Source: Thanks Samsung, but ads shouldn’t predict the future anymore
After many years stuck on the side lines, podcasts are now becoming sought after by everyone from radio companies, streaming services, newspaper publishers to TV companies and many, many more. Media brands of all forms see podcasts as a part of their future, a way to increase and diversify listening time (streaming services); fight back against streaming (radio); reach new audiences (news); and extend audience engagement (TV). To some degree podcasts can probably deliver on all those expectations, and while the creative possibilities are clear, the path ahead is not so straight forward:
Source: Podcasts: a Netflix Moment for Radio But Perhaps not the Future of Spotify | Music Industry Blog