LUDDITES, REJOICE!!! Like there was ever any doubt...
The annual contest that no tech company wants to win announced its decisions Thursday. Among those getting the notorious “anti-awards” for invasive, wasteful or fragile products were an eye-tracking AI “soulmate” companion for combating loneliness, a musical lollipop and new AI features for Amazon’s widely used doorbell cameras. Samsung’s “Bespoke AI Family Hub” refrigerator received the overall “Worst in Show” recognition from the group of consumer and privacy advocates who judged the contest."
Yet someone thinks this crap will sell. Highlights from the AP story are:
Amazon’s doorbells once again ring privacy alarms
An array of new features for Amazon’s Ring doorbell camera system won the “Worst in Show” for privacy for “doubling down on privacy invasion and supporting the misconception that more surveillance always makes us safer,” said Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Among the new Ring features is an “AI Unusual Event Alert” that is supposed to detect unexpected people or happenings like the arrival of a “pack of coyotes.”
“That includes facial recognition,” Cohn said of the new Ring features. “It includes mobile surveillance towers that can be deployed at parking lots and other places, and it includes an app store that’s going to let people develop even sketchier apps for the doorbell than the ones that Amazon already provides.”
Deskbound AI ‘soulmate’ companion is always watching your eyes
Winning the “People’s Choice” of worst products was an AI companion called Ami, made by Chinese company Lepro, which mostly sells lamps and lighting technology. Ami appears as a female avatar on a curved screen that is marketed as “your always-on 3D soulmate,” designed for remote workers looking for private and “empathetic” interactions during long days at the home office. It tracks eye movements and other emotional signals, like tone of voice.
The group says it is calling out Lepro “for having the audacity to suggest that an AI video surveillance device on a desk could be anyone’s soulmate.” Advocates acknowledged the device comes with a physical camera shutter but said they were unsettled by its “always-on” marketing.
Tech lollipop gets dinged for environmental waste
Lollipop Star attracted attention early at CES as a candy that plays music while you eat it. Its creators say it uses bone induction technology to enable people to hear songs — like tracks from Ice Spice and Akon — through the lollipop as they bite it using their back teeth. But the sticks can’t be recharged or reused after the candy is gone, leaving consumer advocate Nathan Proctor to give it a “Worst in Show” for the environment.
“We need to stop making so many disposable electronics, which are full of toxic chemicals, require critical minerals to produce and can burn down waste facilities,” said Proctor, who directs the Public Interest Research Group’s right-to-repair campaign.
Amen.
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4 comments:
I tell you, this AI in technology will not end well.
I can see some of it in art mixed with natural media and technique...but that's the cut off with me.
Ya know... if these AI Tech Bro morons didn't go for lowest hanging fruit (commercialism and playing off the stupid), and invested the time to get AI better out of the gate, it may not be something. But it's a clusterfuck of crap. All of it. But money first! Fix later.
The world needs to quit the AI stuff being handed out to the public - especially creepy shit like the cameras using facial recognition and "companion" crap. It's invasive and will (ultimately) be used against populations.
It's not quit the AI crap, I just wish we would be given the opportunity to decide where, if at all, we're going to let it in. I feel like someone made the decision for me and I can't do anything about it.
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