photography guy

Facebook suing Apple over antitrust practice. THE IRONY! IT BURNS!!!

So Elon Musk doesn't know what the word "verification" means...

"Machine learning" is a much more accurate term than "AI". Technologies like ChatGPT and "AI art" or whatever are not in any meaningful way "artificial intelligence". They just apply algorithms to massive amounts of data to spit out something that looks real, but still falls straight into the uncanny valley, and these technologies have no sense of awareness of what they are doing. They don't make decisions; they wouldn't be able to pass a Turing Test, much less solve a Trolley Problem.
The current "AI" fad of this era is, in my mind, analogous to what "bleeding edge" tech companies of the late 90s and early 00s thought the internet was going to become, with 3D VR-style, immersive "cyberspace" experiences, where our avatars walk around in rendered worlds (which can currently happen in gaming environments, but is not part of our normal everyday lives). Instead, our internet experiences are mediated by browsers on 2D screens. Not exactly Ready Player One, or Lawnmower Man, or Johnny Mnemonic.

I trust (with a reasonable amount of skepticism) Apple's intentions, in terms of using personal data (stripped of identifiers) to improve their products and services. I EXPECT Facebook/Meta, whatever, will steal as much data as possible, track our movements in our own homes, record every conversation, parse EVERYTHING, use machine learning and AI for the sole purpose of building a more robust, detailed digital profile of us than it already has and sell that our digital identities to anyone who wants to buy it. That's literally their business model.

In this "brave new world", I hope Apple can still hold to their commitment to customer privacy and security. So far, they've been robust enough to tell the FBI, "We literally can't access private user information." If Apple has to design technologies that would allow governments to access user data directly off of their devices, then that would make them government contractors, not consumer product manufacturers. Apple has built their brand on prioritizing customer privacy and security, and that's been part of their core branding for more than 10 years, I think.

This video broke my brain. I mean, simply writing and performing a song is hard enough, but to create videos as complex as they do is trans-dimensional stuff.

I definitely won't be able to afford the first few iterations, but I really like that they're committing to a whole new platform (i.e. the AR hardware, plus Vision OS, making it more than just a "peripheral" device), not just a gimmick like so many other "VR goggle" concepts. I expect that over the next 5-10 years, it will get smaller, thinner, lighter, more powerful, and hopefully more affordable. I'd like to see the price go down to $999 for "SE"-flavored versions, $1999 for mid-range, and $2999 for "Pro" versions. I think the implementation is well thought-out, and I genuinely hope there's enough of a market for it to mature and evolve over time. Apple does have a pretty good record of leading the industry into new consumer tech spaces. I don't mean that they're necessarily the first to invent a particular technology, but their implementation has generally been more intuitive and user-friendly.
Portable digital music players existed before the first iPod, "smartphones" existed before the iPhone, "tablet computers" existed before the iPad, and "VR goggles" have existed long before the Vision Pro, but Apple have always managed to steer the industry through their tighter software/hardware integration. Hopefully the same goes with the Vision Pro. I think there's a lot of potential here.