Column: Apple Must Heed the Lessons of Meta’s ‘Pervert’ Glasses
The introduction of a wearable device with a camera is a landmark and pivotal moment. Done right, Apple’s product could give the company a leg up on its rivals by becoming the first breakthrough device that regular people might use to actually interact with AI in the physical world. Or it might blow up in executives’ faces. The devil is in the details — and perhaps how users define a “camera” and what it can do.
Apple Must Heed the Lessons of Meta’s ‘Pervert’ Glassesbloomberg.comIn what looks like a curiously sloppy oversight, Apple Inc. has inadvertently confirmed Bloomberg’s reporting on the company’s first big swing at an AI-enhanced wearable device. Hidden in a coming Mac software update, a 13-second video shows a man wearing AirPods pick up a book and hold it in front of him. “With Visual Intelligence,” the voice-over says, “your world becomes savable. See something you like? Just ask me to save it for later.”Column: Don’t Buy Zuckerberg’s ‘Good Guy of AI’ Act
This attempt to position Meta as a champion of decentralized technology is comical. Zuckerberg must assume that everyone has forgotten that at one point Meta’s strategy in the developing world was to essentially centralize the internet through its thankfully ill-fated Internet.org project. Closed systems and control are in Meta’s DNA. Put it this way: the only reason Meta isn’t talking up an all-powerful closed AI model for businesses, governments institutions is that it has so far failed to build a competitive one.
Don’t Buy Zuckerberg’s ‘Good Guy of AI’ Actbloomberg.comAfter seeing a video of Mark Zuckerberg sparring with a UFC champion on a barge in the middle of Lake Tahoe, you might be inclined to dismiss his man-of-the-people essay published on Monday morning. In it, he tries to position his company — which is paying out hundreds of millions of dollars in damages for harming children — as the AI company that will fight for you, me and everything society cares about (such as earning a living).Column: The Fall of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk Is an Omen for the AI Age
For more than two decades, Amazon.com Inc.’s Mechanical Turk offered a similar illusion to its namesake. The 18th century chess-playing “machine” was actually a contraption controlled by a human hidden in a box. Amazon’s groundbreaking digital work platform did this at scale. Its Mechanical Turk was an army of hidden, anonymous workers carrying out a dizzying array of small mundane tasks for money.
More recently, though, the concept has been turned on its head. Where the goal used to hide the human in the machine, now it’s the humans hiding the machine’s existence. A growing number of Turkers, as these gig workers are known, have been passing off AI responses as their own. Given the low pay for tasks, this is understandable — relatable, maybe, to our own work and lives. It has also now helped render these workers obsolete.
The Fall of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk Is an Omen for the AI Agebloomberg.comFor more than two decades, Amazon.com Inc.’s Mechanical Turk offered a similar illusion to its namesake. The 18th century chess-playing “machine” was actually a contraption controlled by a human hidden in a box. Amazon’s groundbreaking digital work platform did this at scale. Its Mechanical Turk was an army of hidden, anonymous workers carrying out a dizzying array of small mundane tasks for money.Column: Alphabet Investors Sound a Warning for Profligate AI Spending
Alphabet Inc.’s impressive second-quarter earnings release on Wednesday seemed on course to go down mostly well with investors. Until the earnings call, the Google parent’s share price was up marginally in after-hours trading, buoyed by cloud growth that smashed estimates.
Then executives disclosed their projection that capital expenditures would increase again, sending the stock down by as much as 4.6%. Let it be a warning to the other hyperscalers preparing to report next week: Even with a quarter as good as this one, you’ll still be punished if you announce yet more spending in pursuit of artificial intelligence.
Alphabet Investors Sound a Warning for Profligate AI Spendingbloomberg.comAlphabet Inc.’s impressive second-quarter earnings release on Wednesday seemed on course to go down mostly well with investors. Until the earnings call, the Google parent’s share price was up marginally in after-hours trading, buoyed by cloud growth that smashed estimates.Column: China’s Kimi K3 Strengthens the Case for US AI Investment
Kimi K3 provides a hugely useful foil for those who want to quieten voices calling for a safer, more structured approach to AI development and implementation in the US. The model’s launch bookended a week in which New York state passed a first-of-its-kind moratorium on data center development, a popular move some worry might become contagious in a midterm year.
China’s Kimi K3 Strengthens the Case for US AI Investmentbloomberg.comWall Street has been on alert for any reason to panic over China’s progress on artificial intelligence. But despite some initial ructions, the breakthrough Friday of a Chinese AI startup that the company said rivals models produced by OpenAI and Anthropic wasn't it — with good reason.Column: Apple’s OpenAI Suit May Turn Out to Be a Favor
Though we don’t yet know the full merits of Apple’s trade secret lawsuit against OpenAI, we do know one thing: It’s bad news for OpenAI’s efforts to build an iPhone-killer. The legal assault will bog down Sam Altman’s company in injunctions and red tape.
But here’s the reality: OpenAI never really stood a chance of toppling the iPhone anyway. This suit should force the company to give up the folly sooner rather than later, culling yet another dead-end side quest on its way to an initial public offering. In the long run, if OpenAI survives, it might one day be thankful that Apple’s intervention made it change course sooner rather than later, saving billions of its desperately needed dollars.
Apple’s OpenAI Suit May Turn Out to Be a Favorbloomberg.comThough we don’t yet know the full merits of Apple’s trade secret lawsuit against OpenAI, we do know one thing: It’s bad news for OpenAI’s efforts to build an iPhone-killer. The legal assault will bog down Sam Altman’s company in injunctions and red tape.Column: Apple Is Giving Intel’s Turnaround Some Momentum
One of the reasons the [Trump administration's investment in Intel] has so far proved so sound is that the White House has made sure of it. According to The Wall Street Journal, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick personally pushed deals on Intel’s behalf with some of the most lucrative clients you could think of. They include Nvidia Corp., the company at the heart of the AI revolution; SpaceX, which would like to be; and now, reportedly, Apple Inc. — a crown jewel client that would be the firmest stamp of approval yet on the Intel turnaround project.
Apple Is Giving Intel’s Turnaround Some Momentumbloomberg.comColumn: Oura Could Be the AI David Among the Goliath IPOs
If the company could take its own “Readiness Score,” as the device gives its wearers each morning, it would surely say “optimal” for an IPO. The sales pitch to potential investors should be that the Oura ring is the starting point for something much greater.
Oura Could Be the AI David Among the Goliath IPOsbloomberg.comColumn: Google Is Trying to Integrate Too Much AI Too Quickly
Yet as the I/O keynote flew past the hour-and-a-half mark on Tuesday, it became clear Google faces an issue in rolling out AI to all those services. Hearing the latest announcements was like sitting in a wind tunnel. The danger that consumers will be left overwhelmed, and grow more resistant as a result, is real. In trying to reinvent Google’s services for AI, there’s such a thing as doing way too much way too quickly.
Google Is Trying to Integrate Too Much AI Too Quicklybloomberg.comColumn: Altman ‘Won’ the Musk Trial But May Have Lost Wall Street
Was Musk portrayed in court as untrustworthy, hypocritical and bullying? Did he come across as brash and argumentative on the stand? Well sure. Hold the front page. Investors know what they’re getting with Musk. They’re still figuring out Altman.
Altman ‘Won’ the Musk Trial But May Have Lost Wall Streetbloomberg.comColumn: Don’t Throw Out the Keyboard in the AI Revolution
Just last week I had a someone reply to a request for an interview using what he referred to as “AI-assisted articulation.” Harshith Vaddiparthy, a tech executive, read my email asking for his view on the reliabilty of Anthropic’s coding tool. Then he spoke into his computer using OpenClaw, a speech-to-text tool, “to create a full doc with my thoughts.” He reviewed it before sending it to me.
“The key nuance I would emphasize is that OpenClaw is not independently inventing answers on my behalf,” Vaddiparthy told me after I quizzed him about it. “The point of view is mine.”
Is it, though? I get what he’s saying: They are his thoughts, structured into text, then approved. But I think he’s kidding himself, as is anyone else delegating to these tools. An unstructured, unarticulated thought spoken aloud is merely a half-thought; a raw egg cracked into a cold pan. “Writing is thinking,” the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough said in 2002. “To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.”
Don’t Throw Out the Keyboard in the AI Revolutionbloomberg.comColumn: AI Is the Boorish Guest at Graduation Ceremonies
As boos rang out among the audience of University of Central Florida graduates, commencement speaker Gloria Caulfield turned to the faculty staff behind her to ask what had happened. Then it dawned on her: She’d mentioned artificial intelligence.
AI Is the Boorish Guest at Graduation Ceremoniesbloomberg.comColumn: Anthropic’s Capacity Pinch Cracks the Door for OpenAI
That percentage difference might seem negligible, but for demanding workflows, it isn’t. “Anthropic has some fantastic models,” said Wade Foster, CEO of automation company Zapier, who explained that his company switches out models often for a variety or reasons, one of them being reliability. “The whole industry is compute constrained, and Anthropic has procured a lot less compute compared to OpenAI. So yes, I think Anthropic is feeling that.” (Separately, Foster said, Claude Design had failed him just as he was finishing a presentation. “Well, that stinks,” he remembered thinking.)
Anthropic’s Capacity Pinch Cracks the Door for OpenAIbloomberg.comColumn: Apple Is Winning the AI Spending Game by Not Playing It
Separate from the pack is Apple, which has a much different story. Analysts on its Thursday earnings call didn’t bring up capex even once — a contrast to previous quarters when the concern had been that Cook was being too timid in spending compared with Apple’s peers. Instead, focus was on simply whether the company can make its hardware quickly and cost effectively enough to meet what is a surge in demand to use them … for AI.
Apple Is Winning the AI Spending Game by Not Playing Itbloomberg.com