At some point in the future, AIs may create works of art, music, and writing that rival human-created ones. For now, what’s most impressive about most generative AIs is their capacity to produce lots of mediocre work very quickly. This ability is transforming many industries: In the world of higher education, where I work, we…
2024 was another year defined by generative AI, with software features put into the hands of millions of people worldwide and unavoidably built into popular services, like Google Search. While some AI tools, like ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode and Google’s NotebookLM, were delightful to interact with, the prevailing narrative remained on the technology’s inherent flaws,…
Hilariously, almost all the third-party integrations the company launched—DoorDash, Uber, Midjourney, and more—are being retired, so those functions just don’t work. (Not that they really worked before.) The scroll wheel is less janky, and the interface improvements are welcome. For example, you can now press and hold the push-to-talk button and scroll up or down…
Love it or hate it, you have to admit Temu had a banger year. Launched in late 2022, the Chinese-owned ecommerce site, known for selling a vast array of astonishingly affordable goods, took only two years to become a household name in the US. Over the past 12 months, it has topped download charts, surpassing…
Many pieces of AI-generated content were used to express support for or fandom of certain candidates. For instance, an AI-generated video of Donald Trump and Elon Musk dancing to the BeeGees song “Stayin’ Alive” was shared millions of times on social media, including by Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican. “It’s all about social signaling….
Buttu, who regularly travels to the city of Ramallah in the West Bank from her home in Haifa, Israel, for work and to visit friends, says Google Maps has led her astray many times in recent years. “I’ve been told to drive right into a wall that’s been up since 2003,” she says. Others have…
In 2025, it will be commonplace to talk with a personal AI agent that knows your schedule, your circle of friends, the places you go. This will be sold as a convenience equivalent to having a personal, unpaid assistant. These anthropomorphic agents are designed to support and charm us so that we fold them into…
In 2025 we will see AI and machine learning leveraged to make real progress in understanding animal communication, answering a question that has puzzled humans as long as we have existed: “What are animals saying to each other?” The recent Coller-Dolittle Prize, offering cash prizes up to half-a-million dollars for scientists who “crack the code”…
I asked Amko Leenart, director of design for Ford Europe, about why Ford used VW’s woeful controls in both the Explorer and the Capri, and he told me Ford worked with a partner to better the response on the sliders (but wouldn’t tell me how), then admitted that “we tried to improve it a bit—and…
If Google’s generative AI Gemini Assistant chatbot is to surpass OpenAI’s ChatGPT in popularity in the coming years, it may have to do so without some of the promotional partnerships that helped thrust Google search front and center into Americans’ lives. In a US federal court filing on Friday, Google proposed a series of restrictions…