News
Google wants to kill browser cookies: Of course, you know I’m not talking about pastries! Cookies are one of those technologies that we both hate and resign to live with. In my opinion, the usual “option” dialogue to accept or refuse cookies that we face with every site we visit for the first time is an example of regulation gone wrong, very much like the acceptance of terms and conditions. But reportedly, Google is now exploring an option to eliminate browser cookies for tracking at the user level in the Chrome browser. I have to note that this is happening almost four years after Apple and Firefox made the same move. This is good news, except for some marketing companies that rely on cookies to make a profit…
Apple Vision Pro sales launch today: Yes, today is the big day, at least for the new and supposedly revolutionary Apple VR headset. Though all of us know it’s not going to be a hot-selling device from the start –given its mountain-high price tag ($3,500 and up), we didn’t expect it would be packed with new applications: above 600 apps specifically for the Vision Pro are packing the special app store. And that’s not all; those 600 are apps specific to the device, but it can run more than a whooping one million compatible apps originally intended for the iPhone. Are you considering buying an Apple Vision Pro? The odds are against it. I commented about the AI in it (or its absence) in a Medium post.
Alexa is about to get a Generative AI overhaul: In one of my Medium posts, I commented how Siri was becoming obsolete as it was not at the same conversational level as ChatGPT and Generative AI chatbots in general. Well, that was applicable to Alexa as well, perhaps even more so because Amazon was losing money with its Alexa division. However, according to TechCrunch, the needed Generative AI overhaul is coming to Alexa, as was announced a few weeks ago at CES 2024. Now it’s Siri's turn, don’t you think?
This week’s quote
You know that normally the quotes in this section come from the tech world. But a few days ago, I read a quote so damn good that I decided to share it with you.
“I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.”
– Abraham Lincoln
I liked this quote not because it came from the former American president but because it promotes empathy and goes against the fast judgments of people, particularly when they are aligned with an opposing ideology or party. In the polarized society we’re living in, an attitude like this turns out to be not only positive but urgent.
This week’s product/resource link
This time I’m not announcing a new product, but an important upgrade to an existing one: now Bard, Google’s AI chatbot, can create images! At least for users outside of the European Union, which has some ongoing conflicts with Google (with Apple as well, but that’s another story).
For content creators like me, it’s a big deal to be able to generate images for illustration purposes. For instance, the artistic figure at the top of this post (about the Turing Test, which is the topic of this week’s blog article) was created using Microsoft Designer with AI, which did a terrific job –it went beyond what I expected.
At this point, I’m not sure which one is the better image-generating product, the MS Designer (called from MS Copilot) or Bard.
Check these examples from Bard:
Prompt: Can you create one image of a robot talking with a human ?
Resulting image:
I even ask for a style adjustment:
Prompt: Can you transform that image into an ink drawing ?
Resulting image::
Not bad at all! What do you think? The gender choices are intriguing (human male, robot female).
Images are produced in a 1536 ☓ 1536 pixel canvas, which is largely enough for most web illustrations.
Blog piece highlights
This time, my Medium post (from which the top figure comes) is about the Turing Test and how it first became the golden standard for testing human-like intelligence, only to be debunked years later because of some shortcomings I explain in the article.
The highlights of this story are:
Why it’s important for technical people to know how and why the Turing Test became obsolete.
What was the “imitation game” created by Alan Turing.
The Turing Test real-life contests that were organized.
The limitations and drawbacks of the Turing Test.
After giving a devastating critique of the Turing Test, Hector Levesque from the U. of Toronto proposed the “Winograd Schema” test to replace it.
What is the current status of cognitive capabilities measurement.
Closing thoughts.
Here is the end of the free newsletter. Paying subscribers get a friend link to the blog piece (so they can read without a Medium subscription), as well as friend links to a curated collection of recent Medium articles.