I'm still not convinced that Tesla's camera-only approach will work well in all situations. According to a quick AI search, Elon doesn't like Lidar based on "cost, complexity, and philosophical disagreement with its necessity". Other manufacturers seem to have no problem with the first two of these and I challenge his last reason. I would have thought that a combination of available technologies would give you the safest options for all circumstances.
As someone who's done software testing, I'm always thinking about the edge cases. Something like a small child running in from the side of the vehicle, a runaway beer keg or something falling off an adjacent work site. Perhaps Elon is right and a camera array backed by an AI may be able to handle all cases but let's see just how well this plays out over the next few years. To date there have been around 50 fully autonomous Tesla taxis tested and based on the videos they still had their share of issues. By comparison Waymo has been operating commercial rides in self-driving cars in San Francisco since 2023, and in Austin since March with no safety monitor. According to the CEO, the cars have made 10 million trips safely so far.
- There is a new 3200-megapixel telescope in action way up on a Chilean mountain. The recently commissioned Vera C. Rubin Observatory is finally photographing the galaxy and the first pictures have found 2,104 new asteroids in the Solar System in the initial ten hours of operation. The first pictures released show 10 million galaxies, being just 0.05% of the overall mission to map out almost 20 billion galaxies.
- So, what do you do if an AI takes over your job? Use an AI to find another one for you of course. Jobright.ai, a recruiting startup co-founded by Ethan (Yudian) Zheng and Eric (Yuan) Cheng in 2023, recently released Jobright Agent that you can find on their website. This is a software-based service that can apply for jobs on your behalf. The earlier version was called Orion but did not automate the actual application process. According to the company, the new agent looks through over 400,000 job postings each day, then matches your skill sets with criteria and then submits the application for you. I visited the website and the current version is for the US market only, but they indicate that global expansion is on the way. Imagine how this will affect the typical job applicant who writes their own applications.
- According to the Gartner Group, job applications have surged 45% as candidates use ChatGPT to auto-generate resumes. At the same time companies have deployed AI chatbots to screen them out. This has led to what some are calling an "applicant tsunami" of 11,000 applications per minute on LinkedIn. Gartner predicts that by 2028, one in four job applicants could be completely fake. So you can imagine a robot generating your application and another robot receiving and perhaps even interviewing your application robot for the position, all while you sleep.
- There is a new study from MIT titled "Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt When Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task". Basically, it found that those using ChatGPT showed lower brain activity, weaker memory, and reduced original thought the more they used it. By the third round the students mostly used cut and paste and the essays became the same as others and when asked to revise their work later, most couldn't recall what they'd written. The teachers described the essays as "soulless". The control, brain only group, stayed deeply engaged in all three sessions and the results were superior. The scary part for the researchers was just how fast ChatGPT users stopped thinking for themselves. Parents need to be aware of the dangers here.
- I'm still travelling as I write this and the challenge is still connectivity. Sadly, Gigsky did not work for my Samsung Galaxy S22 Pro while on the cruise ship and I never got it to work in any way on the Google Pixel 7 Pro. The company refunded all my money which was nice. The primary issues, as usual, comes down to the software. Based on reviews, results vary depending on the ship and cruise carrier concerned. I also suspect that sometime if the future Gigsky will get it working on a broader range of phones and cruise ships, just not mine this time. It does work on land but that was never the goal as a plethora of providers can give you that service for a lot less. The other primary issue is text only support. This is only useful if you have two phones, one to have the conversation and the other to troubleshoot the problems. Until they get voice call support I can't take them seriously. Even the WiFi on the cruise ship is not stable all the time, so remember that if you want to carry out business while on holiday. Also for some reason the Google AI started sending me ads in German.
James Hein is an IT professional with over 30 years' standing. You can contact him at jclhein@gmail.com.
