back to article Like a celeb going bonkers with botox, Google injects 'AI' into anything it can

On Wednesday, Google kicked off its annual developer conference and media spectacle, Google I/O, at the Shoreline Amphitheater, a stone's throw from its Mountain View, California, headquarters. CEO Sundar Pichai reviewed the requisite user milestones, noting that there are now two billion active Android devices. Then he …

  1. handleoclast

    Another thing to delete from your phone

    Or put a bit of tape over the camera lens.

    Because, like google's voice-activated assistant, it will be bloody hard to completely get rid of it. And if you don't get rid of it I'm damned sure it will surreptitiously peek with your cam all the damned time (if it doesn't now, give it a few iterations). There will be times when you really, really do not want that to happen.

    It was only a few hours ago, noticing the cam in a newly-acquired, cast-off laptop peering at me that I reached for the tape. After taping it, I had the thought that it would be great if there were a sliding shutter on laptop cams. Now I see it being a good idea on phones too.

    Mechanically, I imagine a snap-action mechanism that causes it to be held either open or closed, as desired. Force is required to move it from either stable state to the other. Much better than relying on friction.

    It needn't be integral to the laptop or phone. A glue-on device would also work. Integral is better because it would likely have a better form factor.

    I hereby put this idea in the public domain. Anybody can implement it with my blessing.

    1. danR2

      Re: Another thing to delete from your phone

      '... because, Dave, although you took very thorough precautions... against my seeing you...'

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Tensor-ops are usually 8 bit integer operations (what TensorFlow runs on), hence the ludicrously high numbers out of a small, cheap chip.

  3. inmypjs Silver badge

    "11.5 petaflops of computation for machine learning workloads"

    Errm, why does machine learning need floating point?

    Hardly anything I have learnt or know is expressed with decimal places.

    1. danR2

      Re: "11.5 petaflops of computation for machine learning workloads"

      The 'learning' it does may involve understanding phenomena at a very granular level of precision, such as might be needed for space vehicle reentry at hypersonic flow and requiring the application of Navier-Stokes equations of fluid dynamics.

      https://www.nasa.gov/feature/langley/nasa-langley-revs-up-interest-in-machine-learning

  4. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge

    Oops

    Extra work for lawyers due to relationship breakups and divorces triggered by AI instigated sharing of photos amongst "friends and family"

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Stop

      Re: Oops

      Be fair, AI could also prevent people from accidentally doing same.

      I wouldn't count on it tho...

  5. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
    Joke

    ObXKCD

    As usual, Randall is on top of it.

  6. southpacificpom

    "Like a celeb going bonkers with botox"

    Why didn't that choice headline come with a picture of Kim Kartrashian?

  7. Mage Silver badge

    So in summary

    Absolutely nothing of real value. More Google exploitation plans and blue sky thinking.

    What they do well is selling advertising. Their best software actually developed rather than bought in is search.

    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: So in summary

      Machine Learning is going to be used to automate all kinds of tasks and Google provides some excellent libraries and services for it. It's more than a little naive to dismiss this out of hand.

    2. teknopaul

      Re: So in summary

      tensorflow looks pretty cool and Google are using already so you know it aint all hype.

  8. JASR

    According to the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39958028 :

    'Or, and this feature drew a massive cheer here, you can point it at the sticker on the back of a wifi router - the one containing the long password you need to enter - and the app will know it’s a wifi password and automatically connect you to the network without the need for manual input. '

    err... isn't that just swiping passwords and sending them back for analysis... I know everything is now, hopefully, https in Google land, but still...

    1. luminous

      Good grief. Surely anyone knows you need to change the default password? Where I live there is an app that somehow got hold of the database of the biggest ISP in the country... anyone who hasn't changed the default password can get leeched in seconds.

  9. Dr. G. Freeman

    The nightmare that is talky toaster takes one step closer to reality....

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This all looks fantastic. Shame I don't trust any of them.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Load of old bollocks(tm)

  12. Gene Cash Silver badge

    only 6 years late

    "Android camera app displaying the image of a flower, labelled with its name, courtesy of image recognition technology"

    What the f*ck... this isn't new. The Google Goggles app could do this in 2010. Only with far less misleading marketing buzzwords.

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