AI. Artificial Intelligence. Artificial. Makes me wonder if this thing is even for real!
Google recently had its AI event, or wait, I think it was the IO event. No, it was the AI event after all, and it showcased a lot of things which made people go “wow”. It made me go “wow” too…initially. Upon pondering over for a bit, it made me go “Wait, what?” And the latter reaction isn’t because I was pleasantly surprised to know about the feature, but it was a
tad bit creepy, and here’s why… ,.
But before you get into this, its probably better if find out “What you need to know from Google I/O 2018“… or this article might just go above your head.
First things first, they got the cheese right! Because burgers are life, and beers too.
I genuinely liked the things that they’re doing in the healthcare sector. It would bring a revolution in the medical field once it is fully ready. It can “actually quantitatively predict” the chances of readmission as Sundar Pichai said. It does this by analyzing 100,000 data points per patient. Wait, 100k data points?? How much data do they have on me?? And another thing…you know how we used to say that nobody knows what tomorrow will bring.
Well, now Google does.
Coming to Gmail’s auto-complete, or they say smart compose which predicts what you’re gonna type, and gives suggestions that you can accept by just pressing tab. So basically it has been reading all my emails, and now even completes my sentences. Ugh. Doesn’t it know that I have a girlfriend that already does all that for me?!
With suggested actions they aim to get things done with the click of a button. For example, if you’ve clicked pictures of Lisa (btw Sundar, who is this Lisa), google photos knows that they’re her pictures and offers you a suggestion to send these photos to her with a simple click of a button (which is placed in close proximity to the other buttons). What if I’ve clicked photos of someone to spy on them, and I accidently happen to send them. Nope nope. Don’t want.
AI can also “deliver unexpected moments” in the form of features like “colour-pop”. It de-saturates the background in a photo and only keeps the main subject in colour. So basically, it is doing the things that we used to do manually. This used to be a skill of editors, and now your phone can do it on its own. People are going to lose jobs. What are you upto, Google?
AI can now speak in 6 new accents, and yet, Sundar, it still can’t pronounce you name right. Wonder how it would pronounce Indian names like Hardik or African names like !xobile. It just doesn’t ‘click’
Now there’s an option especially for families, to be polite to AI and say “pretty please” as a part of the ‘continued conversations’. I think it would have made more sense if they added the ability for teens to adress AI as “bitch please”.
The ability to book haircut (or any other) appointments seems pretty cool. But if the time slot that you want isn’t available, then AI takes an appointment for the closest available time. It takes away the pleasure of just hanging-up on the person. Please incorporate that too. Mm-hmm.
Android P now has app actions which can predict the next action you want to take. Can it predict when I wanna take a crap next? Hmm. May be if the ‘P’ stands for Andriod Poop.
With Android Dashboard, it will now know how much time you spend on your apps, the number of time you unlocked your phone, the number of notification you’ve got etc. Wait, I’m pretty sure they knew about this. Now they’re just being open about it so we find it cool. Does this have to do anything with the recent questioning of Zuck?!
With Android P, they’ve incorporated ‘starred contacts’ in the DND mode. Can’t they also do it for whatsapp and messenger? You have all our data anyway right. Just go call Mark. He’ll help you out.
Google maps will now have a tab called “For You” which will give you personal recommendations based on the places you’ve visited; like similar restaurants, that will be based on a “your match” score. I hope they don’t give me recommendations based on cuisines and locations. The criteria that I actually use for choosing a restaurant is where I can find hot singles. That’s where I want to find “my match”. Bet you didn’t know that Sundar.
With google lens, it can now also read text which you can copy and paste anywhere, but I wouldn’t be impressed until it can read my doctor’s prescription
With style match it can show us results that look similar. So if I point it to someone sexy that I’m checking out, can I suggest me other similar matches?
With self-driving cars like Waymo, will it start taking away the pleasure of driving from from enthusiasts. And what if it follows all the rules? Will governments lose the source of income from traffic fines? Wait… does this mean no more a$$ holes on the road?! Google… you might just be on to something here!
