Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

With the full understanding that killing 3rd-party cookies in its very popular Chrome browser would impact practically every advertiser, Google, the world's largest seller of advertising, offered its idea of a replacement: FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts). To make a long story short, practically everyone but Google hates the idea. Continue Reading →

Ready to be part of a FLoC? That's Google's acronym for a Federated Learning of Cohorts, a toolset supposedly engineered to help take the "psycho" out of psychographics. Continue Reading →

Microsoft is not joking. Stick a fork in Cortana... it's done! If you are one of the dozens of Cortana users wondering why the Cortana content you created (such as reminders and lists) aren't working on your mobile devices, it's not an April Fools' joke: Microsoft announced last July that it would end support for the Cortana mobile app on March 31, 2021. Continue Reading →

We’re in the middle of a cryptocurrency bubble and an NFT (non-fungible token) craze. For context, the price of a Bitcoin (BTC) is bubbling around $56,000. The price of an Ether (ETH) is just over $1,700. That sounds bubbly, but this column is not about financial advice. I’m going to teach you, step by step, how to build a very small cryptocurrency mining operation so you can get a deeper understanding of the process. Continue Reading →

As part of a smear campaign designed to eliminate her daughter's cheerleading rivals, a woman in Bucks County, Penn., created deepfakes depicting her daughter's rivals naked, drinking, or smoking. Then, according to the Bucks County DA, she sent them to her daughter's coaches and to the victims of her attack with text messages urging the teenaged girls to kill themselves. Continue Reading →

Next time you pull up to the drive-thru, if it sounds a little like you're talking to a robot, you might be. McDonald's has been working hard to make their drive-thru business more efficient, and AI order takers are part of the plan. Why? Because AI never forgets to greet you politely, it listens more accurately than people do, and (of course) it never loses its temper or gets offended. Continue Reading →

As the pandemic enters its second year, we're approaching an inevitable bifurcation of our society: "Presumed Safe" (those who have been vaccinated or exposed to the virus), and "Presumed Unsafe" (those who have not been vaccinated or have not been exposed to the virus). Two distinct groups that are going to test us in ways we've only read about in history books. Continue Reading →

Please forgive the seemingly clickbait headline, but it is factually correct. For all the right reasons, Olivia Munn used the power of social media to organize a "mob" to identify the alleged attacker of her friend's mother. The information supplied to the NYPD led to an arrest. Continue Reading →

We have new tools. We need new ideas. Continue Reading →

Why is Pornhub doing a better job checking user identity and moderating content than Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and almost every other social media platform? Continue Reading →