It is time for another edition of Old Man Macalope Explains How Things Used to Be Better.
No, don’t get up.
Back in the early 2000s, there were three big Apple rumors: the tablet, the set-top box, and the phone. We speculated about them endlessly. Mostly because, since we didn’t have smartphones to look at, we had so little to do. But the point is, we were excited about them.
These days, getting excited about Apple rumors is not as much of a given, and the reason is two simple letters: AI. Let’s look at some rumors that are going around right now.
The first is the rumor that Apple is working on a series of home products. As the Macalope has noted, this is an area he’s wanted the company to get into because it’s a real mixed bag of reliability and privacy, things that Apple generally–not always, but most times–is pretty good at. The rumored product the horny one is most excited for is a doorbell camera that uses Face ID. Compare that to Ring, which recently had to walk back (again) its cozy relationship with law enforcement, and you can see the benefit of Apple entering this market.
This is a place where Apple can solve real problems that people have and make things work better with more privacy.
And then there’s… whatever this is: Apple is working on AI smartglasses, an AI pendant, and AirPods. All of these are AI wearable devices that will depend on the supposedly smarter Siri that seems to be taking longer than expected.
You know, Apple, we went to a lot of trouble to mock Google Glass into the dust bin of technology so it seems a little rude to expect us to turn around and get excited about these things. “Glassholes”? That was some quality work. C’mon.
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Foundry
Turn out that AI is causing a lot of heavy sighing about the future The New York Times notes that people aren’t so much into the AI boom.
Silicon Valley executives promise that artificial intelligence is going to radically change everyone’s life for the better, starting just a few minutes from now.
Hey, hey, Elon Musk patented saying an AI feature is just months away for years on end. Any other executives saying that have to give him a quarter. He doesn’t need it, of course, it’s just the principle of the thing.
In a YouGov survey last year, more than a third of respondents said they were concerned that A.I. would end human life on earth.
Okay, so, yeah, AI has a bit of a public relations problem. Just a global extermination-level public relations problem. That’s… you can get over… that.
Even those with a more hopeful attitude overwhelmingly said in another poll that they would not pay extra to put A.I. on their devices.
Is paying extra to get it out of our devices on the table?
Why can’t people see the utility?
…80 percent of firms reported that A.I. was having no impact on their productivity or employment.
Other than that, the Macalope means.
(He is going to drop in the standard caveat, however: AI does have utility in various applications, it’s just that Silicon Valley executives are trying to jam it into everything, whether it’s warranted or not, and instead of giving it to employees to boost their productivity, they’re cutting staff based on assumed productivity gains that don’t materialize.)
The real tragedy of all this is that by not being 100 percent jazzed about AI, we’re hurting the feelings of the billionaire CEO of Nvidia.
“It’s extremely hurtful, frankly,” Mr. [Jensen] Huang said…
Word is he can barely muster up the excitement to buy more black jackets made of increasingly bizarre types of leather.
“Ant leather? Handmade from 10 million ants? I didn’t know that was a thing. Sigh. Okay. I’ll take twenty.”
Huang’s fee-fees notwithstanding, when AI is routinely used as an excuse to make layoffs, who can blame people for not being super enthused about the technology?
All of this before we even ask the question: will it work? Apple has, to date, struggled to deliver on its AI promises. And maybe that’s a good thing? Because other companies seem content to ship AI products that just don’t work right, often with some catastrophic, if hilarious, results:
And all of that before we ask the question, what impact does it have on the environment?
Apple used to be good at avoiding tech trends and focusing on making products people really wanted. Maybe these devices aren’t exactly what the rumors make them out to be, chatbot-enable wearables that’ll annoy you and everyone else in the waiting room at your doctor’s office. Maybe we’ll be pleasantly surprised. In the mean time, the Macalope’s going to look forward to the more concrete products Apple might ship.
