speculations

Spray-on sensors can turn any clothing into motion-sensing technology

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2402474-spray-on-sensors-can-turn-any-clothing-into-motion-sensing-technology Look, there’s money attached. Budget. Extra budget and we’re behind in the league tables. We need to up our game .. if you’ll forgive the… The Department has made it clear. Unless our school gets its ranking higher, we’re going to miss out on this year’s extra funding. There’s no reason our kids can’t … [Read more…]

Virtual protest held on Roblox: How brands can ethically play on the platform

https://www.marketing-interactive.com/virtual-protest-roblox-ethically-market The authorities should do something. Don’t get me wrong I am all for free speech and the right to protest, and obviously not everyone involved here is a militant but clearly some are. They are intent on trouble and they need to be dealt with. No-one wants to see marches or protests banned but … [Read more…]

Police Use of Face Recognition Is Sweeping the UK

https://www.wired.com/story/uk-police-face-recognition-expansion/ There’s always one open to the idea. They’re not paid much and its not hard work. And they’re easily persuaded. There’s no big moral debates, as we say: “no-one gets hurt”. I think they’re open to it because they know that there is so much data – theirs and ours – that there is … [Read more…]

Scientists Are Researching a Device That Can Induce Lucid Dreams on Demand

https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7bxdx/scientists-are-researching-a-device-that-can-induce-lucid-dreams-on-demand?utm_source=tldrnewsletter My parents told me about when mobile phones (as they were called) first came in at work. “Suddenly we were always available,” they said. They told me how shocked they were that they were expected to answer messages in the evening. Something called “work-life balance” was big at the time. I smile. I mean … [Read more…]

Virtual and augmented reality accelerates from gaming to cars

https://www.ft.com/content/1699c9c8-97d2-45ab-ad07-6871fe4834fe “Are we there yet?” They sometimes said it just for fun, he thought. They weren’t bored. They had their tablets and looked just the same as they did any other time they were buried in their screens at home. There had probably been some retro meme with the phrase. It still grated though. He … [Read more…]

Are clients moving back to highly creative campaigns?

https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/clients-moving-back-highly-creative-campaigns/1846237 Look, it’s not me demanding this. It’s them. They’re sitting at their dinner table and their kids are showing them the latest thing they’ve cobbled together on the their laptop with a few prompts and then they’re on the phone to me yelling the C word. No I don’t know what it means either … [Read more…]

Elon Musk releases new AI chatbot ‘Grok’ in bid to take on ChatGPT

https://www.ft.com/content/093cda92-91d8-49ff-8475-4f66ccff137b He had an ego, a big ego. Everyone knew it and he wasn’t ashamed. He wouldn’t be where he was unless he believed in himself, unless he, personally, had driven the business. His ego was a part of him and it was he who had built… well everything. It was that ego that had … [Read more…]

Sunak, Musk and AI: what we learned from the Bletchley Park summit

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/03/rishi-sunak-elon-musk-ai-summit-what-we-learned We’ve been friends since Ms Babbage’s class. She said it was for a project but I think it was a bit of social engineering. Get him to make a friend. Anyway it worked. We’ve been mates ever since. We’ve liked the same bands and then both realised they were crap. We’ve signed the same … [Read more…]

Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty on all seven counts

https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/02/sam-bankman-fried-found-guilty-on-all-seven-counts/ They’re sentencing me next year. I still protest my innocence but we are where we are. The jury ruled and the judge is calculating the appropriate sentence. It’s all very precise and algorithmic. It’s ironic, my arguments in court were that that the complex interdependencies of human and technological objects were what led to … [Read more…]

The Beatles’ final song is coming together through the power of artificial intelligence

https://www.theverge.com/23933209/the-beatles-now-and-then-release-date-ai It’s sad really. Looking back we were mates. A band of brothers having fun and making things. I remember that first awards ceremony, on stage together. We were so young. Naive maybe but mates, partners. Of course then it all went mad. More awards. More money. But even then, we were friends, partners. But … [Read more…]