Slashdot Mirror
'I've Seen the Future of Consumer AI, and it Doesn't Have One' (theregister.co.uk)
Andrew Orlowski of The Register recounts all the gadgets supercharged with AI that he came across at IFA tradeshow last week -- and wonders what value AI brought to the table. He writes: I didn't see a blockchain toothbrush at IFA in Berlin last week, but I'm sure there was one lurking about somewhere. With 30 vast halls to cover, I didn't look too hard for it. But I did see many things almost as tragic that no one could miss -- AI being squeezed into almost every conceivable bit of consumer electronics. But none were convincing. If ever there was a solution looking for a problem, it's ramming AI into gadgets to show of a company's machine learning prowess. For the consumer it adds unreliability, cost and complexity, and the annoyance of being prompted.
[...] Back to LG, which takes 2018's prize for sticking AI into a superfluous gadget. The centrepiece of its AI efforts this year is a robot, ClOi. Put Google Assistant or Alexa on wheels, and you have ClOi. I asked the booth person what exactly ClOi could do to be told "it can take notes for your shopping list." Why wasn't this miracle of the Fourth Industrial Revolution let loose on the LG floor? I wondered -- a question answered by this account of ClOi's debut at CES in January. Clearly things haven't improved much -- this robot buddy was kept indoors.
[...] Back to LG, which takes 2018's prize for sticking AI into a superfluous gadget. The centrepiece of its AI efforts this year is a robot, ClOi. Put Google Assistant or Alexa on wheels, and you have ClOi. I asked the booth person what exactly ClOi could do to be told "it can take notes for your shopping list." Why wasn't this miracle of the Fourth Industrial Revolution let loose on the LG floor? I wondered -- a question answered by this account of ClOi's debut at CES in January. Clearly things haven't improved much -- this robot buddy was kept indoors.
Andrew Orlowski of The Register is basically a professional dickhead. His main goal seems to be to be as obnoxious and ignorant as possible presumably with the goal of trolling the readership. He's pretty much the reason I stopped reading the Register because of the constant streem of utter bullshit from that guy.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
As much as I am a nerd, I blame "nerds" for this. There is this whole new fad of being a "techie", watching Big Bang Theory, owning a Tesla, and generally being absolutely ignorant about real science, technology and math while "pretending" to be a nerd. I used "pretending" but there may be some legitimate attempt but it is hard to tell if someone is a fake nerd or just a stupid nerd. I think this trend partly follows from women trying to follow the (tech) money and then men trying to follow the women.
This has led to a culture of "techies/nerds" that don't understand one bit how the underlying technology works or how it can be brought to market. All they care about is being able to spew bullshit about how awesomely nerdy they are. Unlike "real" nerds, they have a very shallow understanding of what they are talking about and easily fall for marketing. They totally read that article on self driving cars and they are going to be out net year and totally revolutionize cities and travel. Next, AI will steal all our jobs and we will be unemployed, Google figured it all out yesterday.
TLDR: Fake nerds need something to talk about and buy to show how nerdy they are. Marketing departments across the world have noticed and capitalized on that to the maximum.