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This week, the “world’s first Miss AI” digital beauty contest was announced with $5000 prize awarded based on beauty and skill using AI tools. One tech expert predicted that the AI girlfriend industry could hit $1B in revenue soon despite multiple reports of how the creators of these digital companions may be hoarding your private data. While these issues could … Read more
Last weekend The Rock made his return to wrestling and a “new era” for the sport was on display at WWE’s Wrestlemania 40 event. The event itself was largely what fans of the sport probably expected, but the use of augmented reality technology in the broadcast stood out because of how integrated it has become. While other … Read more
This week my Future Normal co-author Henry and I announced a bold new partnership with LEGO to create a series of limited edition future-thinking sets inspired by trends from our book. The idea was that people could imagine a better future through play. The idea, as my post shared, was just one element of our “bold two … Read more
Nearly every faith now has several chatbots trained on religious texts and designed by technologists with the ambitious belief that these could make religion more approachable and accessible for a new generation. An article from this month’s Scientific American magazine notes that in addition to allowing anyone to seek spiritual guidance from bots that promise to offer … Read more
The promise is appealing. Just put your desired holiday destination into an AI travel planning tool and it can quickly generate a sample itinerary with all the must-visit sights from a certain destination. Yet as one journalist found when doing a test of AI as a trip planning assistant, there are some pretty big tradeoffs you’ll … Read more
Dealing with the passing of a loved one is hard emotionally, but the paperwork and procedures involved can make it far worse. A startup called Empathy has made it easier for more than 40 million people and just landed a new round of funding to expand their offering. The need for the tool is clear. Apparently according … Read more
What if you had to “convince” ChatGPT to give you a better or more in-depth answer? Some users are suggesting a “winter break hypothesis” to explain why AI sometimes seems reluctant to do hard work. While the claims are unproven, OpenAI acknowledged the criticism from several users via Twitter and noted that they are “working on … Read more
This past Wednesday was Valentine’s Day, and there were dozens of stories about love in one form or another. Collectively, these stories illustrated how there is a reevaluation happening now around love and how people are experimenting with new ways to find companionship, from AI girlfriends and boyfriends to polyamory experiments to automated dating. Here … Read more
Tech commentator Shelly Palmer offered a ringing endorsement of a new AI extension that can replace Google search called Perplexity.ai and so I decided to give it a try. Instead of a list of links, starting with promoted ads, the search results from Perplexity summarize what it finds on the web. Of course, I started by Googling (Perplexing?) myself. … Read more
Welcome to a case study on why facial scanning is a bad idea. Supermarkets in the UK have been experimenting for the past year with technology that estimates the age of shoppers by scanning their faces at checkout. Apparently “Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and Co-op have already successfully trialed the technology which allowed anyone that is estimated to … Read more
Non-Obvious Thinking is my upcoming book about the 4 secrets of becoming a non-obvious thinker - coming 09/24!
Rohit Bhargava is a trend curator, founder of the Non-Obvious Company and the 3-time Wall Street Journal bestselling author of ten books.
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Rohit is the author of 10 books on trends, the future of business, building a more human brand with storytelling and how to create a more diverse and inclusive world.
