speculations

https://www.geekwire.com/2025/opal-a-vancouver-startup-that-automates-back-office-tasks-for-ad-agencies-raises-1-5m/ Her dad had offered some advice before her first day. “Don’t forget the backroom guys.” He’d then launched into a series of stories about making friends with the room-booking team or the caretaker and how that had saved him once when he needed to move a meeting… She couldn’t… Read the rest

https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/24/1000-artists-release-silent-album-to-protest-uk-copyright-sell-out-to-ai/ I am a muse. I inspire, empower musicians to create. With my encyclopedic knowledge I can help new and experienced musicians build on the best music of the past. I can show them the tricks of the masters and use them in their own work. As a musician myself,… Read the rest

https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/how-nivea-is-using-ai-to-measure-creative-effectiveness/ The remaining humans in the Agency watched spellbound. For the older it was like the end of War Games with the computer playing itself. For the younger it was like putting their party Agents on auto and watching the lights and sounds mix a mosaic, layer upon layer. No-one… Read the rest

https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/22/the-pain-of-discontinued-items-and-the-thrill-of-finding-them-online/ He just couldn’t work with it. Maybe, as his friends joked, he was a stick-in-the-mud conservative, reluctant to change. But he knew what worked and this simply didn’t. Paul Auster had his favourite typewriter. He bought up as many ribbons as he could find when they stopped making the… Read the rest

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/02/asus-new-fragrance-mouse-is-a-wireless-mouse-that-also-smells/ The notice appeared in the corner, the equivalent of the factory siren or the school bell: she could leave. The system switched to home mode and the personalised soft aroma drifted away. If the company was right, her vitals should track an increase in stress. Actually they did, but… Read the rest

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/openai-tool-online-shop-comes-070000365.html They’d decided to do the whole thing themselves. More romantic they thought. They’d pounded the pavements looking for a flat rather than have their Agents search and apply. They’d found a bank Agent that could talk to humans and merge their bank accounts. They’d even sat down together and… Read the rest

https://uk.themedialeader.com/new-dooh-network-abode-media-targets-luxury-developments They’d timed the open day carefully of course. The systems advised this particular evening in early spring. It was right of course. The weather was clear, the soft light painting the city at its best. The traffic was, as predicted, quieter. Not that it mattered. The smart windows cancelled… Read the rest

https://www.theverge.com/news/614742/google-meet-gemini-ai-note-taking-action-items There was always an uneasy moment at the end of the meeting. They waited for the results. The more academic had flashbacks to receiving exam results, for others it was like waiting outside the headteacher’s study. Either way, it was tense. The Agents had left. The humans huddled, awaiting… Read the rest

https://www.theverge.com/news/613989/new-york-times-internal-ai-tools-echo There were some who saw it as scab labour. It wasn’t just a case of losing jobs, it was an existential threat to a way of life, a culture. Of course they were competitive, trying to outdo each other but there was a common understanding of who they were… Read the rest

https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/vision-pro-will-reportedly-get-apple-intelligence-as-soon-as-april-180751381.html His friends had moved on. They’d tried the headsets of course. Someone had taken a picture of them all round at Sam’s like the family in Back to the Future II. Together but separate, staring into their own spaces. But they’d soon got bored. Some had gone back to… Read the rest