Every day, there are 3 billion+ searches on Google. See how these searches reflect the way the world thinks about climate change.
This Google Experiment shows the searches by topic and geographical location. Graphical display based on Google Trends data in real time.
by Pitch Interactive + Michael Chang
This story will be my “go to” for the 12 people a day who tell me you can’t buy anything with cryptocurrency 🙂
Online retailer Overstock.com is shifting its cryptocurrency investment strategy keeping half of the bitcoin it takes in as payment, the company’s CEO has said.
Overstock reported its second-quarter earnings last week, revealing that its Medici blockchain business lost $3.3 million before taxes during that period. At the time, the company explained the loss as necessary as it continues to ramp up development around it t0 crypto-securities trading platform.
In an accompanying earnings call, CEO Patrick Byrne was asked about the recent price increases in bitcoin markets and whether Overstock -which has traditionally kept 10 percent of its bitcoin earnings and converted the rest to dollars -had “changed its strategy” in light of the developments.
According to Byrne, Overstock’s board of directors approved a plan to keep 50 percent instead. Notably, he indicated that the firm may move to hold other “crypto-securities”, but did not elaborate further on what that might constitute.
He said on the earnings call:
“I mean we can keep it either in Bitcoin or in some assortment of cryptosecurities. So you’ll see a portfolio emerge there. We’ve had there — had some good luck with some of our — we’ve been storing some coins from counterparties for a couple of years and they’ve turned out — they’ve grown up nicely. Anyway, we have some nice gains in the coin department.”
In response to the question, Byrne said that the company did at one point see a bump-up in overall bitcoin spending.
“We have seen a material change, in part because of everything in the news it spiked and then it settled back down to about $50,000 per week,” Byrne explained.
I’m very happy to have ditched my car and ride in Uber all the time. But I’m still drawn to new deals to get a car.
I don’t miss driving. I love not having to worry about maintenance. But that feeling of needing to jump in and go is hard to shake.
A year ago, I said I could not live without a car. It’s a 45 year habit that I didn’t want to break.
When will you give up your car? Will Gig rentals help?
GM’s Maven car sharing company is expanding its Gig service across the U.S., with six new major urban markets to be added to the locations where the short-term rental service aimed at gig economy workers is available. Those include L.A., where it’s going live today, as well as Boston, Phoenix, and Washington, D.C. this fall, with Baltimore and Detroit to be added some time after that.
Maven Gig offers cars from its fleet of GM vehicles on a weekly basis, with no longer-term commitments required. Gig rolls in insurance (minus the deductible), unlimited miles and regular maintenance for one flat weekly fee, which start at $180 per week plus tax for vehicles like the Chevrolet Cruze.
The idea is that the freelance driving economy, including ride hailing as well as activities like grocery and package delivery, all require people to have readily available vehicles. Gig economy workers are often occasional, however, and work when they need to boost their spending but not necessarily on a consistent basis that would be best served by them owning their own vehicle.
The new expansion also brings in a new official partner, HopSkipDrive, which is a ride sharing service designed for getting kids around town with additional screening processes for drivers and real-time monitoring. Other official partners including GrubHub, Instacart, Roadie and more, though Gig can be used for any freelance workers looking for a vehicle on a limited term basis.
Maven says Gig drivers have already driven over 170 million miles since the service began in 2016, with the Bolt EV (Gig’s most popular rental option) having driven 1.4 million all-electric miles in California since February, 2017. Maven says Gig drivers average 30 percent more miles per day than those using traditional engine vehicles.
As an interactive medium that offers unparalleled immersion, Virtual Reality (VR) allows users to experience, preview, and escape reality. Early adopters are predominantly gamers, driven to the medium by the promise of”being there’. But given the huge growth potential of the market, it is interesting to understand the demographics of VR owners and intenders to ensure current and future use cases drive further demand.
A recent report from the User Experience Strategies (UXS) service at Strategy Analytics “Virtual Reality: Who are VR owners and VR Intenders?” has explored the demographics of VR owners and intenders in the US, Western Europe, China and India. While using VR to try out other products before purchasing them drew the greatest level of interest, at present there is no”one’ killer use case or ownership demographic that prominently stands out above all others.
Click here for the full report:
Key report findings:
I see us having many intelligent devices in our lives soon. They will learn to talk to each other and there is the well-known risk that they may all rise up and destroy us.
I don’t see any reason to dwell on one possible future. I’d prefer to plan for using smart machines that learn the futility of war and decide to keep us around. As long as we’re not trying to program them to fight, I think they will find ways to prevent that and help us in many ways we can’t begin to imagine now.
Dan Machen puts it another way. A good read
I blame the parents -AI needs to be raised right
Apparently, artificial intelligence is going to take over our lives, our jobs, our minds even and not necessarily in a good way. It’s inevitable.
Apparently.
That’s rubbish.
I blame the parents.
“We’re all products of our environment” covers everything from pit bulls to career criminals, so why don’t we apply the same thinking to machines?
Using only Twitter, human beings have radicalised Microsoft’s Tay chatbot into a Hitler-loving maniac.
Within 24 hours.
Its Chinese equivalent, Xiocle, fared much better. Because it was based on their social behaviour and more. Because it was raised right.
Growing up in a stable home, Xiocle was more efficient. It did what it was actually supposed to do.
And understanding where we go with AI is something I’m really pleased the IPA has put at the heart of its agenda. Its rallying call to our industry to master the machines, monitor them and use data to drive creativity and innovation is right where we need to be.
By doing so, we’ll grease the proverbial wheels and make tech more human.
So far, AI has done an impressive job. It’s beaten people at chess. It’s played video games. This is all part of the nursery. But we’re seeing it begin grow up. By being a shoulder to lean on rather than a novelty item, the dystopian shroud dissipates.
And clawing through the mist, you can see what AI can and should be. It needs agency. A sense of purpose further than just winning a game of Breakout.
It’s showing promise in some really key areas for our future health and prosperity. It’s crunching mind-boggling quantities of data to teach us how to interpret CT scans better than any human; it’s giving us the means to keep our transport networks working, and even working out how much to feed farmed fish to avoid wastage.
That’s pretty major.
But as groundbreaking as all of this may be, it still feels a step away from us. It’s not quite personal enough, which is frustrating. But it’s the next step that will leave permanent footprints.
Nexus CX, a pioneer in AI, is getting properly up close and personal. It’s currently piloting a piece of tech called SU, which aims to chat to suicidal men. It’s not there to replace doctors, family or friends -nothing can really replace those things. What SU does, though, is act as the conduit, the catalyst.
We men are idiots. We bottle things up inside. We might not want to talk to people, but we do want to talk. Offering a bot like SU allows the safety of anonymity. You’re not being judged. You’re just talking to a piece of AI about how you feel. You’re getting your feelings out there, one way or another.
In SU’s pilot stages, men who thought they were talking to a bot responded more openly than those who were told they were speaking with a human at the other end. Its bank of responses has also increased more than five-fold, just from talking to people and learning. That’s incredible.
AI isn’t going to replace normal functions -that’s not the point. It’s going to offer us opportunities previously unthinkable. It’s going to upgrade our existence.
To put the human in the machine, though, you have to actually put a human in the machine.
Pete Trainor, founder of Nexus CX, has a friend who has an illness that’s meant he’s spent his life in a wheelchair. His body means nothing to him. He dreams of transcending skin and having a functional, mechanised body.
Nexus CX are working with Amazon’s Alexa, recording Trainor’s friend, documenting his memories and thoughts, helping to test a virtual counterpart and robot avatar that will speak based on collected patterns of speech.
Obviously he knows it’s not a clone, not the same person -again, it’s about unblurring the lines while still making it relatable. When this kind of tech exists -Ã la Black Mirror, without the bad stuff -it will be the ultimate time capsule. It’ll console people in a way that humans can’t. Again, not replacinghuman interaction. Just offering a different spin.
And when you think of the great technological advancements of the past decade, one creation stands head and shoulders above the rest: the iPhone. It didn’t take the biggest leaps, it just tied everything together. It became a tangible, tactile piece of kit that resonated with people and conquered the world as a result.
To break through and usher in the next phase of AI, we need to remain mind-kind to mankind. We need to identify what makes us human and, rather than replicate that with AI, figure out how technology can complement these characteristics.
Ultimately, it’s down to the process. We need to grow and change with tech, embracing these new tools to better what we do. By raising AI correctly and getting it in with the right crowd, it can move even further forward and give us the utopia we deserve.
Dan Machen is the director of innovation at Hey Human.
