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A First Look at America’s Smartest Highway

America's smart highway

Driverless vehicles are obviously going to be part of humanity’s future, but they aren’t experiencing a great PR moment right now. Every day it seems there is another story about an incident involving a driverless vehicle hitting someone, mistaking something on the road or generally malfunctioning. Not to mention the justifiable fears of hacking that … Read more

The Next Generation of Political Polling Is Asking AI to Simulate Human Voters

The Next Generation of Political Polling Is Asking AI To Simulate Human Voters

Have you ever picked up the phone to answer a call from a pollster? I can probably guess your answer, and that’s not uncommon. A tiny fraction of people actually answers those calls, which creates a predictably skewed result if political campaigns are truly relying on those calls to generate any useful insight. The modern … Read more

Marques Brownlee and Walt Mossberg on Trustworthy Tech Reviews

Marques-Brownlee-and-Walt-Mossberg-On-Trustworthy-Tech-Reviews-

How useful will tech reviews (or any other kind of online review) be in a future where they can increasingly be AI generated? This was a topic tech journalist Kara Swisher focused on in an interview with tech reviewers Walt Mossberg and Marques Brownlee. They are an interesting duo to discuss the topic side by side. … Read more

India Is Ground Zero for the Irresistible Appeal of Sanctioned Deepfakes

India Is Ground Zero For the Irresistible Appeal of Sanctioned Deepfakes

The biggest AI story this week was the showdown between Open AI and actress Scarlett Johansson over the use of a voice concerningly similar to hers after she had refused to collaborate with Open AI. This is quickly becoming a recurring typical deepfake story: someone steals the likeness of a famous person, and that person … Read more

Truecaller Offers Perfectly Useless Feature to Let AI Respond to Calls in Your Voice

Truecaller Offers Perfectly Useless Feature To Let AI Respond To Calls In Your Voice

This week’s example of unnecessary AI innovation comes from the caller ID platform Truecaller which is using Microsoft’s Personal Voice technology to power a new tool that can “replicate users’ voices in order to greet and respond to callers.” Here’s a breakdown of each “feature” it promises, along with a list of how I currently … Read more

How Airbnb “Icons” Illustrate the Future of Immersive Entertainment

How Airbnb “Icons” Illustrate the Future of Immersive Entertainment

The future of entertainment will be driven by more immersive experiences. This week, there was a story about how the Meta Quest VR headset will be accessible by passengers on long haul flights. The possibilities to tie this into tourism, destinations and the overall travel experience are vast. Also this week, Airbnb has been getting some attention … Read more

Imagining the Future of Hip Hop and Art in 50 Years

Imagining the Future Of Hip Hop and Art In 50 Years

The day after the Met Gala, the Internet was flooded with deep fakes of celebrities who weren’t there, wearing things they never wore. Some of them were pretty convincing. The future of art, fashion, and music will see all sorts of disruptions in the coming years from technology like this. Where is all of this headed? … Read more

AI Startups Are Too Power Hungry, But Scientists Are Working on A Solution

AI energy impact

In aviation, most people know that a huge portion of the costs in that industry come from paying for fuel. Recent projections are that it will account for more than 30% of the overall expenses for most airlines. When it comes to AI startups, investors and industry watchers are starting to get a similar picture of just … Read more

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In addition to Non-Obvious Thinking, 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.

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