Amazon, Arm, and Softbank: A Happy Coincidence Indeed
August 18, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
I try not to think about Amazon, Arm, and Softbank. Oh, let me add a footnote to the “Amazon” reference. When deliveries do not arrive or I am scammed, then I do think about Amazon. But most of the time, it is a digital discount store located in a low-rent district.
However, I noted an article about Amazon which caused me to wrinkle my already crinkly brow; specifically, ”Amazon Has More Than Half of All Arm Server CPUs in the World” uses a trigger word for me — “all.” But that is news headline writing today. The main assertion in the article is that Amazon with its multi-billion dollar server business has more Arm CPUs than Apple has three nanometer fabrication commitments. Why are these giant companies involved in “real news” which seems focused on stock amping than improving technology or privacy protections?
Then I remembered that Softbank, an outfit that is losing money on almost 70 percent of its investments, according to the Financial Times, wants to convert Arm into an initial public offering. I then wondered, “Is this confluence of seemingly disparate factoids a happy coincidence?”
My hunch is that somewhere, somehow, an inspired PR / SEO / or marketing professional thought it would be a good idea to pitch Softbank as a giant in the land of artificial intelligence. AI is hot; Softbank’s financials are, in my opinion, not so hot.
The question becomes, “How accurate is the information about these Arm chips?” and “Is the PR push part of an activity which I cannot discern?” And there is the “all”. How important is the Arm IPO dream if Amazon shifts to a different CPU? Good vibrations strike me as important for both Amazon and Softbank.
Stephen E Arnold, August 18, 2023
Another High School Tactic: I Am Hurt, Coach
August 7, 2023
This is a rainy Monday (August 7, 2023). From my point of view, the content flowing across my monitoring terminal is not too exciting. More security issue, 50-50 financial rumor mongering, and adult Internet users may be monitored (the world is coming to an end!). But in the midst of this semi-news was an item called “Musk Says He May Need Surgery, Will Get MRI on Back and Neck.” Wow. The ageing icon of self-driving autos which can run over dinobabies like me has dipped into his management Book of Knowledge for a tactic to avoid a “cage match” with the lovable Zuck, master of Threads and beloved US high-technology social media king thing.
“What do you mean, your neck hurts? I need you for the big game on Saturday. Win and you will be more famous than any other wizard with smart cars, rockets, and a social media service.” says the assistant coach. Thanks MidJourney, you are a sport.
You can get the information from the cited story, which points out:
The world’s richest person said he will know this week whether surgery will be required, ahead of his proposed cage fight with Meta Platforms Inc. co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. He previously said he “might need an operation to strengthen the titanium plate holding my C5/C6 vertebrae together.”
Mr. Zuckerberg allegedly is revved and ready. The write up reports:
Zuckerberg posted Sunday on Threads that he suggested Aug. 26 for the match and he’s still awaiting confirmation. “I’m ready today,” he said. “Not holding my breath.”
From my point of view, the tactic is similar to “the dog ate my homework.” This variant — I couldn’t do my homework because I was sick — comes directly from the Guide to the High School Science Club Management Method, known internationally as GHSSCMM. The information in this well-known business manual has informed outstanding decision making in personnel methods (Dr. Timnit Gebru, late of Google), executives giving themselves more money before layoffs (too many companies to identify in a blog post like this), and appearing in US Congressional hearings (Thank you for the question. I don’t know. I will have the information delivered to your office).
Health problems can be problematic. Will the cage match take place? What if Mr. Musk says, “I can fight.” Will Mr. Zuckerberg respond, “I sprained my ankle”? What does the GHSSCMM suggest in a tit-for-tat dynamic?
Perhaps we should ask both Mr. Musk’s generative AI system and the tame Zuckerberg LLAMLA? That’s “real” news.
Stephen E Arnold, August 7, 2023
Cyber Security Firms Gear Up: Does More Jargon Mean More Sales? Yes, Yes, Yes
July 31, 2023
I read a story which will make stakeholders in cyber security firms turn cartwheels. Imagine not one, not two, not three, but 10 uncertainty inducing, sleepless night making fears.
The young CEO says, “I can’t relax. I just see endless strings of letters floating before my eyes: EDR EPP XDR ITDR, MTD, M, SASE, SSE, UES, and ZTNA. My heavens, ZTNA. Horrible. Who can help me?” MidJourney has a preference for certain types of feminine CEOs. I wonder if there is bias in the depths of the machine.
Navigate to “The Top 10 Technologies Defining the Future of Cybersecurity.” Read the list. Now think about how vulnerable your organization is. You will be compromised. The only question is, “When?”
What are these fear inducers? I will provide the acronyms. You will have to go to the cited article and learn what they mean. Think of this as a two-punch FUD moment. I provide the acronyms which are unfamiliar and mildly disconcerting. Then read the explanations and ask, “Will I have to buy bigger, better, and more cyber security services?” I shall answer your question this way, “Does an electric vehicle require special handling when the power drops to a goose egg?”
Here are the FUD-ronyms:
- EDR
- EPP
- XDR
- ITDR
- MTD
- M
- SASE
- SSE
- UES
- ZTNA.
Scared yet?
Stephen E Arnold, July 31, 2023
The Frontier Club: Doing Good with AI?
July 28, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
I read some of the stories about several big outfits teaming to create “the frontier model forum.” I have no idea what the phrase means.
MidJourney created this interesting representation of a meeting of a group similar to the Frontier Model Forum. True, MidJourney presented young people in what seems to be an intense, intellectual discussion. Upon inspection, the subject is the décor for a high school prom. Do the decorations speak to the millions who are going without food, or do the decorations underscore the importance of high value experiences for those with good hair? I have no idea, but it reminds me of a typical high school in-group confabulation.
To fill the void, I turned to the gold standard in technology Pablum and the article “Major Generative AI Players Join to Create the Frontier Model Forum.” That’s a good start. I think I interpreted collusion between the syllables of the headline.
I noted this passage, hoping to satisfy my curiosity: According to a statement issued by the four companies [Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI] Wednesday, the Forum will offer membership to organizations that design and develop large-scale generative AI tools and platforms that push the boundaries of what’s currently possible in the field. The group says those “frontier” models require participating organizations to “demonstrate a strong commitment to frontier model safety,” and to be “willing to contribute to advancing the Forum’s efforts by
participating in joint initiatives.”
Definitely clear. Are there companies not in the list? I know of several in France, China has some independent free thinkers beavering away at AI, and probably a handful of others. Don’t they count?
The article makes it clear that doing good results from the “frontier” thing. I had a high school history teacher named Earl Skaggs. His avocation was documenting the interesting activities which took place on the American frontier. He was a veritable analog Wiki on the subjects of claim jumping, murder, robbery, swindling, rustling, and illegal gambling. I am confident that this high-tech “frontier” thing will be ethical, stable, and focused on the good of the people. Am I an unenlightened dinobaby?
I noted this statement:
“Companies creating AI technology have a responsibility to ensure that it is safe, secure, and remains under human control,” Brad Smith, Microsoft vice chair and president, said in a statement. “This initiative is a vital step to bring the tech sector together in advancing AI responsibly and tackling the challenges so that it benefits all of humanity.”
Mr. Smith is famous for his explanation of 1,000 programmers welded into a cyber attack force to take advantage of Microsoft. He also may be unaware of Israel’s smart weapons; for example, see the comments in “Revolutionizing Warfare: Israel Implements AI Systems in Military Operations.” Obviously the frontier thing is designed to prevent such weaponization. Since Israel is chugging away with smart weapons in use, my hunch is that the PR jargon handwaving is not working.
Net net: How long will the meetings of the “frontier thing” become contentious? One of my team said, “Never, this group will never meet in person. PR is the goal.” Goodness, this person is skeptical. If I were an Israeli commander using smart weapons to protect my troops, I would issue orders to pull back the smart stuff and use the same outstanding tactics evidenced by a certain nation state’s warriors in central Europe. How popular would that make the commander?
Do I know what the Frontier Model Forum is? Yep, PR.
Stephen E Arnold, July 28, 2023
Open AI and Its Alignment Pipeline
July 12, 2023
![Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t[1]](http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t1-15.gif "Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t[1]")
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
Yep, alignment pipeline. No, I have zero clue what that means. I came across this felicitous phrase in “OpenAI Co-Founder Warns Superintelligent AI Must Be Controlled to Prevent Possible Human Extinction.” The “real news” story focuses on the PR push for Sam AI-Man’s OpenAI outfit. The idea for the story strikes me as a PR confection, but I am a dinobaby. Dinobabies can be skeptical.
An OpenAI professional explains to some of his friends that smart software may lead to human extinction. Maybe some dogs and cockroaches will survive. He points out that his company may save the world with an alignment pipeline. The crowd seems to be getting riled up. Someone says, “What’s an alignment pipeline.” A happy honk from the ArnoldIT logo to the ever-creative MidJourney system. (Will it be destroyed too?)
The write up reports a quote from one of Sam AI-Man’s colleagues; to wit:
“Superintelligence will be the most impactful technology humanity has ever invented, and could help us solve many of the world’s most important problems. But the vast power of superintelligence could also be very dangerous, and could lead to the disempowerment of humanity or even human extinction,” Ilya Sutskever and head of alignment Jan Leike wrote in a Tuesday blog post, saying they believe such advancements could arrive as soon as this decade.
There you go. Global warming, the threat of nuclear discharges in Japan and Ukraine, post-Covid hangover, and human extinction. Okay
What’s interesting to this dinobaby is that OpenAI made a decision to make the cloud service available. OpenAI hooked up with the thoughtful, kind, and humane Microsoft. OpenAI forced the somewhat lethargic Googzilla to shift into gear and respond.
The Murdoch article presents another OpenAI wizard output:
“Currently, we don’t have a solution for steering or controlling a potentially superintelligent AI, and preventing it from going rogue. Our current techniques for aligning AI, such as reinforcement learning from human feedback, rely on humans’ ability to supervise AI. But humans won’t be able to reliably supervise AI systems much smarter than us and so our current alignment techniques will not scale to superintelligence,” they wrote. “We need new scientific and technical breakthroughs.”
This type of jibber jabber is fascinating. I wonder why the OpenAI folks did not do a bit of that “what if” thinking before making the service available. Yeah, woulda, shoulda, coulda. It sounds to me like a driver saying to a police officer, “I didn’t mean to run over Grandma Wilson.”
How does that sound to the grand children, Grandma’s insurance company, and the judge?
Sounds good, but someone ran over Grandma Wilson, right, Mr. OpenAI wizards? Answer the question, please.
The OpenAI geniuses have an answer, and I quote:
To solve these problems, within a period of four years, they said they’re leading a new team and dedicating 20% of the compute power secured to date to this effort. “While this is an incredibly ambitious goal and we’re not guaranteed to succeed, we are optimistic that a focused, concerted effort can solve this problem,” they said.
Now the capstone:
Its goal is to devise a roughly human-level automated alignment researcher, using vast amounts of compute to scale it and “iteratively align superintelligence.” In order to do so, OpenAI will develop a scalable training method, validate the resulting model and then stress test its alignment pipeline.
Yes, the alignment pipeline. What a crock of high school science club yip yap. Par for the course today. Nice thinking, PR people. One final thought: Grandma is dead. CYA words may not impress some people. To a high school science club type, the logic and the committee make perfect sense. Good work, Mr. AI-Men.
Stephen E Arnold, July 12, 2023
Amazon Is Winning the Product Search Derby… for Now
July 12, 2023
![Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t[1]](http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t1-19.gif "Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t[1]")
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
Google cannot be happy about these numbers. We learn from a piece at Search Engine Land that now “50% of Product Searches Start on Amazon.” That is even worse for the competition than previously predicted. In fact, Google’s share of this market has slipped to less than a third at 31.5%. What’s Google’s solution to this click loss? Higher ad pricing? Or maybe an even higher ad-to-real content ratio?
The search racers are struggling to win traffic related to products. What has Amazon accomplished? Has Google’s vehicle lost power? What about Microsoft, a company whose engine is Bing-ing?
We also learn just 14% of respondents start their searches at retail or brand websites, while social media and review sites each capture a measly 2%. But that could change as Generation Z continues to age into independent shoppers. That group is the most likely to launch searches from social media. They are also most inclined to check online reviews. Reviews with photos are especially influential. Writer Danny Goodwin cites a recent Pew survey as he writes:
“Reviews and ratings can make or break a sale more than any other factor, including product price, free shipping, free returns and exchanges, and more. Overall, 77% of respondents said they specifically seek out websites with reviews – and this number was even higher for Gen Z (87%) and millennials (81%). Ratings without accompanying reviews are considered untrustworthy by 56% of survey respondents. Where people read reviews and ratings:
- Amazon: 94%
- Retail websites (e.g., Target, Wal-Mart): 91%
- Search engines: 70%
- Brand websites (the brand that manufactures the product: 68%
- Independent review sites: 40%
User-generated photos and videos gain value. Sixty percent of consumers looked at user-generated images or videos when learning about new products.
- 77% of respondents said they trust customer photos and videos.
- 53% said user-generated photos and videos from previous customers impacted their decision whether to purchase a product.”
So there you have it—if you have a product to market online, best encourage reviews. With pics, or it didn’t happen. Videos are a significant marketing factor. What happens if Zuck’s Threads pushes into product search, effectively linking text promotions with Instagram? And the Google? Let’s ask Bard?
Cynthia Murrell, July 12, 2023
On Twitter a Personal Endorsement Has Value
July 11, 2023
![Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t[1]](http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t1-24.gif "Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t[1]")
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
The high school science club managers are engaged in a somewhat amusing dust up. First, there was a challenge to a physical fight, a modern joust in which two wizards would ride their egos into glory in Las Vegas, a physical metaphor for modern America. Then the two captains of industry would battle in court because … you know… you cannot hire people another company fired. Yesterday, real journalists crowed from many low rise apartment roof tops that a new social media service was growing allegedly at the expense of another social media company. The numbers prove that one company is better at providing a platform to erode cultural values than another. Victory!
Twitter… endorsed by those who know. Thanks, MidJourney, you output an image in spite of your inappropriate content filter. Good work.
Now I learn that one social media outfit is the bestie of an interesting organization. I think that organization has been known to cast aspersions on the United States. The phrase “the great Satan” sticks in my mind, but I am easily confused. I want to turn to a real news outfit which itself is the subject of some financial minds — Vice Motherboard.
The article title makes the point: “Taliban Endorses Twitter over Threads.” Now that is quite an accolade. The Facebook Zucker service, according to the article, is “intolerant.” Okay. Is the Taliban associated with lenient and tolerant behavior? I don’t know but I recall some anecdotes about being careful about what to wear when pow-wowing with the Taliban. Maybe that’s incorrect.
The write up adds:
Anas Haqqani, a Taliban thought-leader with family connections to leadership, has officially endorsed Twitter over Facebook-owned competitor Threads. “Twitter has two important advantages over other social media platforms,” Haqqani said in an English post on Twitter. “The first privilege is the freedom of speech. The second privilege is the public nature & credibility of Twitter. Twitter doesn’t have an intolerant policy like Meta. Other platforms cannot replace it.”
What group will endorse Threads directly and the Zuck implicitly? No, I don’t have any suggestions to offer. Why? This adolescent behavior can manifest itself in quite dramatic ways. As a dinobaby, I am not into drama. I am definitely interested in how those in adult bodies act out their adolescent thought processes. Thumbs up for Mr. Musk. Rocket thrusters, Teslas, and the Taliban. That’s the guts of an impressive LinkedIn résumé.
Stephen E Arnold, July 11, 2023
Quantum Seeks Succor Amidst the AI Tsunami
July 5, 2023
![Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t[1]](http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t1-5.gif "Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t[1]")
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
Imagine the heartbreak of a quantum wizard in the midst of the artificial intelligence tsunami. What can a “just around the corner” technology do to avoid being washed down the drain? The answer is public relations, media coverage, fascinating announcements. And what companies are practicing this dark art of outputting words instead of fully functional, ready-to-use solutions?
Give up?
I suggest that Google and IBM are the dominant players. Imagine an online ad outfit and a consulting firm with mainframes working overtime to make quantum computing exciting again. Frankly I am surprised that Intel has not climbed on its technology stallion and ridden Horse Ridge or Horse whatever into PR Land. But, hey, one has to take what one’s newsfeed delivers. The first 48 hours of July 2023 produced two interesting items.
The first is “Supercomputer Makes Calculations in Blink of an Eye That Take Rivals 47 Years.” The write up is about the Alphabet Google YouTube construct and asserts:
While the 2019 machine had 53 qubits, the building blocks of quantum computers, the next generation device has 70. Adding more qubits improves a quantum computer’s power exponentially, meaning the new machine is 241 million times more powerful than the 2019 machine. The researchers said it would take Frontier, the world’s leading supercomputer, 6.18 seconds to match a calculation from Google’s 53-qubit computer from 2019. In comparison, it would take 47.2 years to match its latest one. The researchers also claim that their latest quantum computer is more powerful than demonstrations from a Chinese lab which is seen as a leader in the field.
Can one see this fantastic machine which is 241 million times more powerful than the 2019 machine? Well, one can see a paper which talks about the machine. That is good enough for the Yahoo real news report. What do the Chinese, who have been kicked to the side of the Information Superhighway, say? Are you joking? That would be work. Writing about a Google paper and calling around is sufficient.
If you want to explore the source of this revelation, navigate to “Phase Transition in Random Circuit Sampling.” Note that the author has more than 175 authors is available from ArXiv.org at https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.11119. The list of authors does not appear in the PDF until page 37 (see below) and only about 80 appear on the abstract page on the ArXiv splash page. I scanned the list of authors and I did not see Jeff Dean’s name. Dr. Dean is/was a Big Dog at the Google but …
Just to make darned sure that Google’s Quantum Supremacy is recognized, the organizations paddling the AGY marketing stream include NASA, NIST, Harvard, and more than a dozen computing Merlins. So there! (Does AGY have an inferiority complex?)
The second quantum goody is the write up “IBM Unlocks Quantum Utility With its 127-Qubit “Eagle” Quantum Processing Unit.” The write up reports as actual factual IBM’s superior leap frogging quantum innovation; to wit, coping with noise and knowing if the results are accurate. The article says via a quote from an expert:
The crux of the work is that we can now use all 127 of Eagle’s qubits to run a pretty sizable and deep circuit — and the numbers come out correct
The write up explains:
The work done by IBM here has already had impact on the company’s [IBM’s] roadmap – ZNE has that appealing quality of making better qubits out of those we already can control within a Quantum Processing Unit (QPU). It’s almost as if we had a megahertz increase – more performance (less noise) without any additional logic. We can be sure these lessons are being considered and implemented wherever possible on the road to a “million + qubits”.
Can one access this new IBM approach? Well, there is this article and a chart.
Which quantum innovation is the more significant? In terms of putting the technology in one laptop, not much. Perhaps one can use the system via the cloud? Some may be able to get outputs… with permission of course.
But which is the PR winner? In my opinion, the Google wins because it presents a description of a concept with more authors. IBM, get your marketing in gear. By the way, what’s going on with the RedHat dust up? Quantum news releases won’t make that open source hassle go away. And, Google, the quantum stuff and the legion of authors is unlikely to impress European regulators.
And why make quantum noises before a US national holiday? My hunch is that quantum is perfect holiday fodder. My question, “When will the burgers be done?”
Stephen E Arnold, July 5, 2023
Google: Is the Company Engaging in F-U-D?
July 3, 2023
![Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t[1]](http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t1.gif "Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t[1]")
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
When I was a wee sprout in 1963, I was asked to attend an IBM presentation at the so-so university I attended. Because I was a late-night baby-sitter for the school’s big, hot, and unreliable mainframe, a full day lecture and a free lunch. Of course, I went. I remember one thing more than a half century later. The other attendees from my college were using a word I was hearing but interpreting reasonably well.
The artistic MidJourney presents an picture showing executives struggling to process Google’s smart software announcements about the future. One seems to be wondering, “These are the quantum supremacy people. They revolutionized protein folding. Now they want us to wait while our competitors are deploying ChatGPT based services? F-U-D that!”
The word was F-U-D. To make sure I wasn’t confusing the word with a popular epithet, I asked one of the people who worked in the computer center as a supervisor (actually an underpaid graduate student) but superior to my $3 per hour wage, what’s F-U-D.
The fellow explained, “It means fear, uncertainty, and doubt. The idea is that IBM wants us to be afraid of buying something from Burroughs or National Cash Register. The uncertainty means that we have to make sure the competitors’ computers are as good as the IBM machines. And the doubt means that if we buy a Control Data system, we can be fired if it isn’t IBM.”
Yep, F-U-D. The game plan designed to make people like me cautious about anything not embraced by administrators. New things had to be kept in a sandbox. Really new things had to be part of a Federal research grant which could blow up and destroy a less-than-brilliant researcher’s career but cause no ripple in carpetland.
Why am I thinking about F-U-D?
I read “Here’s Why Google Thinks Its Gemini AI Will Surpass ChatGPT.” The write up makes clear:
“At a high level you can think of Gemini as combining some of the strengths of AlphaGo-type systems with the amazing language capabilities of the large models,” Hassabis told Wired. “We also have some new innovations that are going to be pretty interesting.”
I interpreted this comment in this way:
- Be patient, Google has better, faster, cheaper, more wonderful technology for you coming soon, really soon
- Google is creating better AI because we are combining great technology with the open source systems and methods we made available to losers like OpenAI
- Google is innovative. (Remember, please, that Google equates innovation with complexity.)
Net net: By Gemini, just slow down. Wait for us. We are THE Google, and we do F-U-D.
Stephen E Arnold, July 3, 2023
Call 9-1-1. AI Will Say Hello Soon
June 20, 2023
![Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t[1]_thumb_thumb](http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t1_thumb_thumb-9.gif "Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t[1]_thumb_thumb")
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
My informal research suggests that every intelware and policeware vendor is working to infuse artificial intelligence or in my lingo “smart software” into their products and services. Most of these firms are not Chatty Cathies. The information about innovations is dribbled out in talks at restricted attendance events or in talks given at these events. This means that information does not zip around like the posts on the increasingly less use Twitter service #osint.
Government officials talking about smart software which could reduce costs but the current budget does not allow its licensing. Furthermore, time is required to rethink what to do with the humanoids who will be rendered surplus and ripe for RIF’ing. One of the attendees wisely asks, “Does anyone want dessert?” A wag of the dinobaby’s tail to MidJourney which has generated an original illustration unrelated to any content object upon which the system inadvertently fed. Smart software has to gobble lunch just like government officials.
However, once in a while, some information becomes public and “real news” outfits recognize the value of the information and make useful factoids available. That’s what happened in “A.I. Call Taker Will Begin Taking Over Police Non-Emergency Phone Lines Next Week: Artificial Intelligence Is Kind of a Scary Word for Us,” Admits Dispatch Director.”
Let me highlight a couple of statements in the cited article.
First, I circled this statement about Portland, Oregon’s new smart system:
A automated attendant will answer the phone on nonemergency and based on the answers using artificial intelligence—and that’s kind of a scary word for us at times—will determine if that caller needs to speak to an actual call taker,” BOEC director Bob Cozzie told city commissioners yesterday.
I found this interesting and suggestive of how some government professionals will view the smart software-infused system.
Second, I underlined this passage:
The new AI system was one of several new initiatives that were either announced or proposed at yesterday’s 90-minute city “work session” where commissioners grilled officials and consultants about potential ways to address the crisis.
The “crisis”, as I understand it, boils down to staffing and budgets.
Several observations:
- The write up makes a cautious approach to smart software. What will this mean for adoption of even more sophisticated services included in intelware and policeware solutions?
- The message I derived from the write up is that governmental entities are not sure what to do. Will this cloud of unknowing have a impact on adoption of AI-infused intelware and policeware systems?
- The article did not include information from the vendor? Is this fact provide information about the reporter’s research or does it suggest the vendor was not cooperative. Intelware and policeware companies are not particularly cooperative nor are some of the firms set up to respond to outside inquiries. Will those marketing decisions slow down adoption of smart software?
I will let you ponder the implications of this brief, and not particularly detailed article. I would suggest that intelware and policeware vendors put on their marketing hats and plug them into smart software. Some new hurdles for making sales may be on the horizon.
Stephen E Arnold, June 20. 2023
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