DeflAition

I've started contemplating this post in mid February 2020 while driving back from Phoenix to San Diego, a few miles after passing Yuma, while staring into the sunset over San Diego mountains on the horizon hundred miles ahead. Since then the world had changed. And by the time you'll read this post a week from now (early April 2020) world will have changed again. And by the summer of 2020 it will have changed several times over. I won't go here too much into the COVID-19 situation, since I'm not a biologist, my personal opinion though it that it is a real deal, it's a dangerous disease spreading like wildfire, something we have not really seen since the Spanish Flu of 1918. And since our supply chains are a lot more fragile, our lifestyles a lot more lavish and everybody is levered up, it has all the chances of causing an economic havoc unlike anything we've seen in the past two centuries. With that out of the way, let's move to AI, as certainly the economic downturn will have a huge impact there.

(not)OpenAI

Let's start with the article in technology review that came out in February going deeper inside … Read more...

AI update, late 2019 - wizards of Oz

 

It's been 7 months since my last commentary on the field, and as it became  regular appearance in this blog (and in fact many people apparently enjoy this form and keep asking for it), it is a time for another one.  For those new to the blog, here we generally strip the AI news coverage out of fluff and try to get to the substance, often with a fair dose of sarcasm and cynicism. The more pompous and grandiose the PR statement, the more sarcasm and cynicism - just to provide some balance in nature. The field of AI never fails to deliver on pompous and grandiose fake news hence I predict there will be a material for this blog for many years to come. Now that the introductory stuff is behind and you've been warned, let us go straight to what happened in the field since May 2019. 

Self driving cars

As time goes, more and more cracks are showing on the self driving car narrative. In June, one of the prominent startups in the competition - Drive.ai got acqui-hired by Apple, reportedly days before it would have ran out of cash. For those not … Read more...