AI is the new marketing buzzword

Some readers will remember back a decade or three when the big term was "turbo". Everything was turbo something. Turbo speed, turbo clearing, turbo graphics and so on. Today, the equivalent term is AI. I saw an advertisement recently for glasses described as AI technology that adapts to your sight. It was a regular lens with some design elements, perhaps from an AI, perhaps not, with claims of predictive focus. Rubbish. There was no inherent active or dynamic AI technology in the lenses to back up this claim and I don't think such a technology at that level is even available at any price in the current time. The same goes for many other claims preceded or appended by the AI moniker. Like turbo, it is the current marketing buzzword and since many don't understand it and what the current engineering and technological limitations are in 2023, it has become part of the mindscape.

– Along those same lines but definitely something that is occurring as part of modern technology, since my last article I watched a discussion between well-known blogger Tim Pool and Dr Epstein under the heading “The Culture War EP. 34”. They went into detail of just how much control Google and associated entities have over our lives. I respectfully recommend you watch it here tinyurl.com/4mcpdw7h. Dr Epstein went into a lot more detail about just how we are all manipulated by such platforms. It is well worth watching.

– Remember a few weeks ago where Huawei was claiming how good their 7 nanometre chips were? Apple has announced their new CPU range using 3nm technology. The new M3 chips come in three versions simply named as base, plus Pro and Max. Apple claims the new chips’ performance cores (p-cores) are as much as 15% faster than the M2 and 30% on the e-cores. Not sure what good this comparison is but they also claim they run as fast as the older M1 versions using half the power. It is wise to remember Apple has a history of making dubious claims backed by unlabelled charts about the performance of its M-series silicon. This is particularly true especially when it comes to comparisons of their graphics-processing powers.

– It is worth noting that the announcement was made on the heels of one by Qualcomm who unveiled its upcoming Snapdragon X Elite. They say these will deliver about 50% higher multicore performance compared to Apple’s M2 when it arrives in mid-2024. If true, this will achieve multicore CPU performance parity with the M2 Pro and M2 Max.

– I admit to having a fascination with the latest in hard and solid-state drives of all types. Western Digital is in the process of splitting their company into two — one for hard drives and the other for NAND flash memory products. While both areas are concerned with data storage, it is in a mechanical versus non-mechanical manner. It remains to be seen how well WD comes out of this process but as long as they keep making bigger capacity, faster and less expensive storage, then I’m all for it.

– While not a cause for celebration for many including me, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act given to us by President Bill Clinton, celebrates its 25th anniversary. The plan was intellectual property protection for all and if you look at my articles from that time, I argued that the process was not well thought out, and would, in a number of ways, fail. Looking at it today there are still a large number of countries that ignore the whole copyright concept. The internet service providers and a few others like Yahoo were exempted from liability for what their customer base did. The DCMA is still around today but I think it is well past its time.

– It’s been about a year-and-a-half since Elon Musk purchased Twitter, now X. He has certainly changed the platform and it’s also a lot more open, but according to some estimates it is currently worth about US$19 billion (675 billion baht) versus the $44 billion purchase price. This is all based on the current $45 a share restricted stock units for employees. I think X is worth more than that but it remains to be seen where it is in another 18 months. Musk has shown his ability to make a business profitable. I also think the current value is a reflection of attempts by some groups to poison the platform because it was allowed to be more open. I suspect there are more benefits being prepared for both X users and for those who may subscribe.

– The government of Canada has decided that Tencent’s WeChat app, and Kaspersky’s security suite, are too risky to run on government-issued mobile devices. The first one makes a lot of sense, but I had to laugh at the last. For years, I’ve been writing about the bloatware that is Kaspersky but to say it is risky indicates how far the one-time market leader in security may have fallen.

James Hein is an IT professional with over 30 years’ standing. You can contact him at jclhein@gmail.com.