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Tag: #AIApocalypse

The Demise of Internet 1.0

The Demise of Internet 1.0

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Image by Johnson Martin from Pixabay

Some strange things are going on in tech these days, and we wonder if, with the advent of AI, tech has lost its way.

Or is taking a different direction. Here are some seemingly unrelated events that all seem to be headed in the same direction…

First, Sam Altman approached Scarlett Johansson to be the voice of his AI, Sky, although she turned him down. “Sky drew widespread attention for its striking similarity to Johansson, particularly her role as an AI voice assistant in the movie Her,” Forbes reported. “‘OpenAI itself has acknowledged the vocal similarities between Sky and Johansson but stressed the voice “is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson” and belongs to “a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice.”
Still, they did remove the voice from the ChatGPT4o model. Read More...

Scary Tales of Tech

Scary Tales of Tech

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Photo by Mark Bishop on Unsplash

According to the Farmer’s Almanac, “The origin of Halloween … can be traced to Samhain, an ancient pagan Celtic festival that is Gaelic for “summer’s end,” a day to bid good-bye to warmth and light. It marks the end of the harvest season and the start of winter (the darker “half” of the year).

“The ancient Celts believed that the veil between the living and the dead was at its thinnest during Samhain, making it the ideal time to communicate with the deceased and divine the future.”

When the Romans arrived, they combined the old traditions with their own, and Samhain evolved into All Hallows’ Day, “hallow” meaning “to sanctify.” Read More...

Is Tech Starting to Get Under Your Skin?

Is Tech Starting to Get Under Your Skin?

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We used to play competitive field hockey. Center halfback. Winning team and why? We and our center forward had a strategy: Yours Truly always fell back – to the least protected part of the field – rather than shadowing her.  She would invariably get the ball at some point, send it to us, who would guard it until she was in position to score, return it to her. Score! Game over. Worked every time.

It’s one thing to skate to where the puck is going, as per ice hockey great Wayne Gretzky’s advice. And quite another to follow the strategy/keep an eye on the field at large. Which is also potentially a winning play.

As a result of our lessons from field hockey, we personally don’t necessarily only follow where the puck is going, but rather, attempt to sort out the underlying strategy as well – and look to what else is happening on the field. For example, it was recently widely reported that Elon Musk says the US should ‘get rid of all’ government subsidies re EVs. As The Verge said, “Musk’s companies have benefitted from many different federal and state subsidies over the years, and the government is a major SpaceX customer (though SpaceX won much of that business by dramatically undercutting the prices of established players). Tesla has also found tremendous success in China after receiving lots of help from the central government there. Musk said Monday that Tesla “did not anticipate any subsidies” when the company was in its early years. Read More...