artificial intelligence

What will your personal AI look like?

May 31, 2019 by JD Lasica Leave a Comment

We’ve arrived at another moment of cultural assimilation — the point at which a new concept or technology becomes absorbed into the social fabric as something that’s new and interesting and soon to be taken for granted.

I remember when I started talking about social media after I co-founded the social media platform Ourmedia in 2005. Almost nobody had heard of the term “social media” back then. By 2007, social media had started gaining widespread uptake, and by 2008, you’d hear occasional references to the phrase on television newscasts and in prime time. Today it’s become a tired catch phrase on the cable news shows.

Mobile, smartphones, virtual reality — each term underwent its own quick adoption curve in recent years, joining the national lexicon and our common tongue.

AI in the movies & the meaning of life (infographic)

January 14, 2019 by Guest post 1 Comment

Do AIs dream of mortality? and other questions posed by artificial intelligence in the movies

Editor’s note: Brian Thomas wrote the following essay to accompany Enlightened Digital’s infographic “A Century of AI in the Movies” (below). Artificial intelligence plays a key role in my high-tech thriller series on Amazon, and I’ll be exploring the topics of AI, AR, VR and mixed reality on this blog in the coming months. — JD Lasica

Guest post by Brian Thomas
Enlightened Digital

Ever wonder about the meaning of life? One unlikely source for some answers may be the realm of artificial intelligence. After all, as tech labs continue down the path of creating intelligent systems, they confront questions about the nature of cognition, awareness and life itself.

Our fascination with these concepts extends to the silver screen. For decades, from Metropolis in 1927 through Star Wars, Tron and Spielberg’s AI, motion pictures have blazed a trail in stoking ideas and igniting debate about AI — and the very notion of what it means to be alive.

Here’s an infographic showcasing thought-provoking movies that discuss life and existence through the lens of AI:

Otter and artificial intelligence for voice

November 17, 2018 by JD Lasica Leave a Comment

A talk with AISense CEO Sam Liang about voice AI and an emerging new landscape

I’ve been writing about new technologies since my days as a columnist at four magazines in the late 1990s. And lately I’ve been incorporating new tech — especially artificial intelligence — into my high-tech thrillers.

So when acclaimed tech author Shel Israel (co-author of “Naked Conversations,” “The Fourth Transformation,” et al.) invited me to the offices of AISense (AI as in artificial intelligence) in Los Altos earlier this month, I jumped at the chance.

What drew us to their AISense HQ was their new product Otter.ai, which we saw in action at the VB Summit in Marin County last week. Both Shel and I knew we were seeing something remarkable: real-time translation of the conversation on stage that was so fast and accurate, it almost seemed like a teleprompter that the speakers were reading from.

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