Everything you need to know about ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Midjourney, Dall-E and more.
Sometimes the pitch-perfect example that totally proves your argument falls directly into your lap approximately three days after you need it to. When I published “‘Robots’ Aren’t ‘Coming for Your Job’—Management Is” last week, I was encouraged by the surprisingly robust discussion around the piece, and the way we frame our conversations about automation and…
Tesla has long lurked in a category of its own in the self-driving car race; where Uber and Google’s Waymo are building fully autonomous vehicles essentially from the ground up, Elon Musk’s electric car company is slouching towards autonomy through a series of increasingly sophisticated updates to its semi-autonomous Autopilot system. Because Teslas are not…
Listen: ‘Robots’ are not coming for your jobs. I hope we can be very clear here—at this particular point in time, ‘robots’ are not sentient agents capable of seeking out and applying for your job and then landing the gig on its comparatively superior merits. ‘Robots’ are not currently algorithmically scanning LinkedIn and Monster.com with…
Last year, when Google first showed off its new Duplex feature that used artificial intelligence to make calls for users, it terrified us because it sounded so human. During the demonstration, Google CEO Sundar Pichai presented Duplex as being an entirely automated service. Google Duplex’s AI assistant called a hair stylist to schedule an appointment…
The famous United States Postal Service motto says, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” Well, that’s never been truer now that the USPS is testing self-driving trucks to deliver mail. The USPS is partnering with San Diego-based startup TuSimple in…
In recent years, eerily accurate deepfake videos have gotten a lot of press, but automated voice replication has been quietly sliding into the uncanny valley as well. Case in point: The AI company Dessa has created a simulation of podcaster Joe Rogan’s voice that is nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. Listen to it in this video…
Online retailers are engaged in a constant, all-consuming quest to make the process of buying stuff ever faster and more efficient and to remove as many barriers between you and the final click-confirmed purchase as possible. Amazon has experimented with IRL ‘dash’ buttons that automatically order you more detergent or diapers. Smaller retailers like Blue…
As drivers around the world went on strike just days before Uber’s IPO, they shared harrowing stories of being overworked and underpaid, subjected to a frustratingly opaque payment system, and even sleeping in their cars in order to save enough money to get by. Research backs up the anecdotes they relayed to the media: Studies…
Amazon recently came under fire when the Verge revealed it used a system that automatically determines the productivity levels of its warehouse workforce, and terminates laggards if they’re too slow to move packages. It was yet another sign that automation was taking over at the retail giant, and a particularly ominous one at that. In…
Who’s up for a friendly neighborhood reminder that the global marketplace is underpinned by automated, high-frequency trading to a nearly incomprehensible degree? Good, then—a new report highlights the still-growing dominance of automation in futures markets: For starters, over two-thirds of livestock futures trading is carried out automatically, and 91 percent of all currency futures trading…
If you think looking for a job is already daunting, anxiety-riddled, and unpleasant, just wait until the algorithms take over the hiring process. When they do, a newfangled “digital recruiter” like VCV, which just received $1.7 million in early investment, hopes it will look something like this: First, a search bot will be used to…
Like everyone else in journalism or the journalism-adjacent world, or anyone who owns a television or internet-connected device, or pretty much anyone who lacked the foresight to drive into the desert yesterday, I found myself powerless but to stare into the semi-redacted collapsing star that is the Mueller Report. Still, as I read through the…
In a rare move by Facebook that doesn’t have the world shaking its head in disbelief, the company’s AI researchers have developed a way to easily turn real people into playable game characters by simply analyzing videos of them going through specific motions. My dreams of finally being an unlockable character in NBA Jam just…
It’s not uncommon for new technology to spawn a new sport: Drone racing has become hugely popular around the world, and Segway Polo is apparently still a thing. It’s now artificial intelligence’s turn to give us a new pastime, but will the sport it invented, Speedgate, take the world by storm, or will it be…
Inside Silicon Valley, the consensus is that artificial intelligence will be the most important technology for the next decade. Okay, but what the hell does that mean for the rest of us? In an attempt to to build in transparency and accountability into the next generation of world-changing technology, American lawmakers introduced a bill on…
In the olden days, when machines were brought in to replace human workers, the workers revolted—the Luddites famously rose up to smash the automated looms that had been deployed by factory owners and were erasing their livelihoods. In modern times, when machines are brought in to replace human workers, the workers vote Trump. Okay, that’s…
On Monday, the UK’s Office of Data and Statistics released a report that found 1.5 million of that nation’s workers are at “high risk” of losing their jobs to automation. “In 2017, out of the 19.9 million jobs analysed in England, 7.4% people were employed in jobs at high risk of automation,” the report notes.…
Stanford University, the bastion of higher education known for manufacturing Silicon Valley’s future, launched the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence this week with a massive party. Big names and billionaires like Bill Gates and Gavin Newsom filed into campus to back the stated mission that “the creators and designers of AI must be broadly representative…
As institutional embrace of automation continues to create a mounting threat to existing jobs, unions are formally taking note. Last year, the largest Las Vegas service workers union organized a strike partly over casinos’ plans to embrace automated systems, and the union won language in the resulting contract that included protections against automation. 2018 also…
The two tragic crashes of Boeing’s best-selling 737 Max planes increasingly look to be caused in part by a malfunctioning automated system—and the pilots’ lack of training around how to deal with it—that was designed to keep the aircraft from stalling out. The final reports aren’t in yet, but the similarities between the crashes in…
