If the rumors are true and this should be true, I started it. As the Canadian CIO Association celebrates his 20th anniversary, we have a special edition of our weekend show where we talk about two amazing CIOs and the evolution of the CIO role. Can't miss it.
music up
Will HP make us fall in love again? AI-powered humanoid robots may be closer than we think. Researchers have found that speaking like a Star Trek character can improve AI results. And how many iPhones will it take for Apple to recoup the money it blew before retiring self-driving electric cars?
The “You Can’t Make This Up” edition of Hashtag Trends talks about all this and more. I'm your host, Jim Love. He is his CIO for IT World in Canada and TechNewsDay in the US.
HP is committed to making you fall in love with it all over again.
We like the price of these printers, but have any of us asked ourselves, wouldn't it be cheaper to just buy a new printer again instead of going out and buying ink to buy a new printer?
We've always known that inkjet printers are a lot like shaving razors. They give you a printer to keep you occupied, but then you have to buy ink.
This gave birth to an entire industry of refill cartridges, and later, third-party or no-name inks.
So printer manufacturers, most famously HP, started making printers that didn't allow cheap third-party inks. They said this is for our own benefit. Because these copy cartridges can harm our printers.
That didn't work. People felt that once they bought a printer, they had the right to do whatever they wanted.
So HP tried out ink on a subscription basis. But people who didn't use up their printer's limit complained that they didn't have to pay for more ink than they used.
So HP is trying a different strategy.
All-in-one plans let you rent a printer for as low as $6.99 per month.
Get a printer. Get ink. Subscribers to the HP All-in plan will receive a new printer and all the ink they need, as well as guaranteed access to HP's “24/7 Pro Live Support.'' If a subscriber encounters a problem that her HP cannot resolve remotely, the company promises to replace the faulty printer the next business day for free.
Eliminate the “endless struggle” over printer ownership by providing a hassle-free printing solution.
Will this make us love HP again? Will this stop the criticism and class action lawsuits?
Well, maybe, until you read the fine print. Yes, it's $6.99 a month, but you can only print 20 pages each month. After that, fees will be added depending on the number of pages. You can pay between $8.99 and $60.99
I predict the next Reddit post will be about someone who bought this all-in-one package and received a much higher bill than they expected.
Sources of information include: [PCMag](https://www.pcmag.com/news/hp-targets-the-haters-with-printer-rental-subscription-plan).
How long do you think it will take until humanoid robots become widespread in the workforce?
And can they fix the printer?
Hint: Some of them currently work for companies ranging from BMW to Canadian Tire.
And don't be surprised if they can do incredibly complex things.
A new humanoid robot startup, Figure, is attracting a lot of attention and investment, with Silicon Valley's “celebrities” valuing the company at $2.6 billion.
Figure is at the forefront of efforts to integrate bipedal robots with dexterous hands into the workforce, and many other companies are joining the effort.
So who do you think is working with robot maker Figure? You don't need AI to understand that OpenAI is working to bring processing and reasoning capabilities from language to humanoid robots.
But don't worry. We have assurances from robot companies that these robots are not here to take our jobs. They first tackle jobs that are too dangerous or repetitive for humans. And they emphasize “upskilling” as a strategy for retraining displaced workers into more fulfilling roles in the same field.
Then they will replace us.
But that's a long way off. right? no. Bret Adcock, a Silicon Valley pioneer of flying taxis, believes robots will be in the workforce within about two years.
And I've put some links to videos in the show notes. You may be wondering.
As the late Jimmy Buffet said, “The danger of my profession…is that my profession does not exist.”
Sources of information include: Axios
robot move the crate on the conveyor belt
robot make coffee,
Tesla's robot “Optimus” Take a walk
Sanctuary Phoenix measure blood pressure.
Forget all the instant YouTube management courses.
A new study reveals that AI chatbots perform better at solving grade-level math problems when asked to respond as if they were Star Trek characters. became.
Two researchers from VMware in California conducted the study. This study was first reported by New Scientist and published on arXiv on February 9, 2024.
Their study aimed to investigate the impact of “positive thinking” prompts on AI performance, a concept that is gaining traction among those working on optimizing chatbot output.
I've read articles like this before where emotional prompting seems to be more effective. One study found that adding emotion to your prompts can help. I started saying that if I got the answer wrong, I would be fired.
I don't know if it works, but it tastes like chicken soup. “I can’t get excited.”
This just shows how much we really know about how these incredible algorithms can display behavior that we don't understand.
These researchers thought that “positive thinking” should not affect the performance of computer systems, but they may have found evidence that suggests otherwise.
In this study, three large-scale language models (LLMs), Mistral-7B5, Llama2-13B6, and Llama2-70B7, were fed 60 human-written prompts designed to encourage AI. It was included. These prompts range from motivational sayings like “This will be fun!” To affirm the ability of AI. The model was then tasked with solving GSM8K, a dataset of elementary-level math problems, to determine the effectiveness of each prompt.
So what are the best performing prompts on the Llama2-70B model?
A story like Star Trek.
Their prompts specifically asked the AI to navigate through turbulence and identify the source of the anomaly, using phrases reminiscent of Starfleet Commander's Notes. This Star Trek-themed prompt significantly improved the model's mathematical solving ability, and the results surprised and baffled the researchers.
This study highlights the unpredictable nature of AI systems and the complex factors that can influence their performance. Although the exact reasons behind the effectiveness of Star Trek prompts are still unknown, it suggests that the way the questions are framed can have a dramatic impact on the quality of the AI's output.
Commenting on the findings, researcher Katherine Frick from Staffordshire University in the UK said that the AI model does not truly understand the context of the prompt, but accesses different sets of weights and probabilities based on the input. He emphasized that
This study shows how much we know about how AI works. So add this to your list of ways to optimize AI performance through carefully crafted inputs.
Is this guy really saying that my prompts would be better if I spoke like a Star Trek character? I know what you're thinking.
Captain, I can't believe my ears.
I can't believe your ears either, Mr. Spock.
Sources of information include: business insider
And speaking of costing more than I expected…
We covered a story about the demise of Apple's self-driving electric car called “Project Titan.”
Apparently, Apple pumped a whopping $10 billion into the project before canceling it. (I never get tired of those puns – they’re exhausting – you know?)
And it turns out this could have been dangerous from the beginning (dangerous?)
Some employees referred to the project as a “Titanic disaster,” reflecting their doubts about its feasibility. Well, you can't beat that. Titan – Titanic. That's what they wanted.
It seems like the only smart move Apple made was not to buy Tesla. They were in talks with Elon Musk, but ultimately Apple decided it would be too difficult to integrate Tesla into its “ecosystem.”
Yeah. But they put the brakes on that deal (which is nice), missing out on the bonus of tying Elon to her Apple brand in some way.
But you know what? Apple still has hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and plans to leverage knowledge and innovations from developing cars, including AI-powered AirPods with cameras, robotic assistants, and augmented reality technology.
So all that IP gets a new lease of life.
I couldn't resist.
Sources of information include: Mac rumors
That's today's show. And what a strange day it was.
Hashtag Trends airs five days a week on a daily news show and a weekend interview show we creatively called “Weekend Edition.”
Please like your comment.
Please send a note to jlove@itwc.ca Or drop a comment below the show notes at itworldcanada.com/podcasts. Look for hashtag trends.
Thank you for your attention. Have a wonderful Friday!
