Tag: small business for sale

Today’s AI isn’t prepared for the messiness of reality

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What began as a warning label on financial statements has become useful advice for how to think about almost anything: “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.” So why do so many in the AI field insist on believing the opposite? Too many researchers and practitioners remain stuck on the idea that the data they gathered in the past will produce flawless predictions for future data. If the past data are good, then the outcome will also be good in the future. That line of thinking received a major wake-up call recently when an MIT study found that the 10 most-cited data sets were riddled with label errors (in the training dataset, a picture of a dog is labeled as a cat, for example). These data sets form the foundation of how many AI systems are built and tested, so pervasive errors could mean that AI isn’t as advanced as we may think. After all, if AI can’t tell the difference between a mushroom and a spoon, or between the sound of Ariana Grande hitting a high note and a whistle (as the MIT study found and this MIT Tech Review article denotes), then why should we trust it to make decisions about our health or to drive our cars? The knee-jerk response from academia has been to refocus on cleaning up these benchmark data sets Read More …

The Gmail-enhancing superpower you didn’t know you needed

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For a service that’s all about interacting with other (alleged) humans, Gmail does a curiously poor job of putting people front and center. Sure, the Gmail inbox is all about communication—but have you ever found yourself staring at an email and struggling to remember what you know about the person who sent it or exchanges you’ve had in the past? If you interact with enough mammals over email, it’s bound to happen. And Gmail just doesn’t have particularly powerful tools for providing the on-demand context you need to successfully navigate your way out of that situation. Up until a matter of months ago, in fact, Gmail didn’t have any real form of integration with its companion Google Contacts service. Late last year, Google added a Contacts panel into the website’s sidebar, which was a significant step—but the information in that panel is still pretty limited and lacking. You can see basic contact info for people who emailed you and a list of past emails involving them, and that’s about it. If you want any additional details, you’ll have to stop what you’re doing, click away from the message, and move over to a whole other page to find it. Read More …

How the online echo chamber gave us the Arizona election audit

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Reporting on the audit of the 2020 presidential election now going on in Maricopa County, Arizona, National Memo’ s Steven Rosenfeld writes that one floor observer was overheard saying, “I hope they are fake ballots, because I am seeing so many Biden.” After the November 7 election, Trump supporters wondered how Biden could possibly have won when all they’d seen for months were reports of packed Trump rallies, yards filled with Trump signs, and excited Facebook posts about Trump and his upcoming win. They were honestly shocked when Trump lost. They simply couldn’t connect up their own experience with the result of the election. They live within a right-wing echo chamber where opposing viewpoints are rarely heard. They saw the widespread support for Biden only through the lens of right-wing misinformation and disinformation. They dismissed Biden’s continual lead in the polls as “fake.” Facebook, the go-to social media platform for Trump supporters in 2020, did a lot to contribute to the echo chamber. When the social network’s algorithms pick up on a user’s interest in right-wing content, it serves them more and more of it, and filters out other opinions. All through the campaign, many Trump supporters saw nothing but news posts and shared memes about Trump’s achievements as president, his huge rallies, and his mockery of Joe Biden and the Democrats. And right-wingers were, and remain, the most energized group on Facebook, even as Donald Trump remains expelled from the platform after he helped incite an insurrection on January 6. The top-performing link posts by U.S. Facebook pages in the last 24 hours are from: 1. Dan Bongino 2. Franklin Graham 3. Read More …

Citizen’s dystopian new feature is mass surveillance disguised as public safety

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O n October 26, 2020, police killed Walter Wallace Jr. in West Philadelphia, as his mother stood on the sidewalk, pleading for his life. Over the next few days, the neighborhood erupted in protest, and my phone lit up with alerts from Citizen, a public safety app. Writers for the app monitor and transcribe police scanner chatter, which is then converted into push notifications. There was a break-in at Rite Aid, a burglary at a nearby liquor store, a dumpster fire one block over, a trash fire 900 feet away. As local news has been decimated by budget cuts and layoffs, apps such as Citizen and Nextdoor have ascended to fill the void. Citizen in particular has increasingly positioned itself as a news organization. “We act fast, break news, and give people the immediate information they need to stay safe,” reads an overview on the company’s LinkedIn profile . Citizen often ranks higher than The New York Times among news apps in the Apple App Store. In theory, the platform democratizes reporting; it allows anyone with a smartphone to post comments and videos to a neighborhood network. But in practice, these alerts and the neighborhood commentary attached to them often read like police stenography and amplify existing biases Read More …

In Epic case, Apple might win the battle and lose the war

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No matter who prevails in the Epic Games v. Apple app store antitrust trial, history may see it as just one skirmish in a wider war. Apple has a good chance of winning. Current antitrust laws—which are ancient—as well as decades of jurisprudence in U.S. courts make it very hard for plaintiffs to win antitrust cases. But Congress is now considering reigning in the monopoly power of companies like Apple through changes to antitrust laws or even through direct regulation of app marketplaces. Indeed, my sources in Congress say lawmakers are watching Epic v. Apple , which is expected to wrap up this week in a federal court in Oakland, California, with great interest. Both the House antitrust subcommittee (led by Democratic Congressman David Cicilline of Rhode Island) and the Senate antitrust subcommittee (led by Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota), have held hearings on app distribution through Apple’s App Store and Google Play. During those hearings, app developers complained about the strict rules they must abide by in order to be listed in the App Store, which is virtually the only way developers can access the huge worldwide market of iOS device users. In the U.S., more than half of all mobile devices run iOS, and studies show iOS users spend far more money on apps and in-app purchases than other mobile users. Apple requires that apps use the App Store’s in-house payment system to sell goods or services within their apps, and it charges developers a commission of up to 30%. App developers are prohibited from selling their apps and many forms of digital services to iOS users any other way. Here’s the language from Apple’s own developer guidelines document: “Apps may not use their own mechanisms to unlock content or functionality, such as license keys, augmented reality markers, QR codes, etc. Apps and their metadata may not include buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms other than in-app purchase.” Apple, of course, makes its own apps, such as Apple Music, and can give them better visibility within the App Store than competing apps from third-party developers. (Search for “Music” in the App Store, and Apple Music, not Spotify, is the top result.) Developers are urging Congress to pass a law that limits the “gatekeeper” power of companies running app stores. Epic complained of all of these things in the courtroom in Oakland but, at least in light of past court decisions, Apple has a compelling defense. Read More …