Last week, I presented some findings that artificial intelligence can churn out dozens of product ideas in a fraction of the time humans can deliver. The AI bots provide higher-ranking ideas, so long as the criteria are defined, and the bot stays in the box. I also provided excerpts from a “help” chatbot that delivered no help but successfully raised my heart rate and blood pressure. Use It or Lose It Smartphones and computerized anything can make us dumber, less capable, vulnerable to power or network outages, and even bad directions. Last week, for example, I regretted turning navigation over…
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As a kid, I remember contemplating why we needed to learn math when we had pocket calculators. Lucky for me, the keyword is contemplating rather than complaining. Math was easy for me for longer than I can remember. My first memory was flash cards. My father, who never carried a calculator, emphasized the importance of math. His calculator was a short pencil – the kind you get with the golf scorecard – and anything to write on to do long math. “Worksheets” included boards, walls, shelves, bags of seed or feed, farm equipment, or anything that would take graphite. Doing…
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McDonald’s McNuggets I picked up an iPhone at the Verizon store for my mother last week as I visited her in Northwest Iowa. She’s wheelchair-bound with one good hand for daily functions such as eating. After the iPhone pickup, I decided to get some lunch for us at McDonald’s, and although I love McDonald’s hamburgers, I hadn’t been in one of their stores for a while. I guess the machines have mostly taken over – order at the in-store kiosk or online with an app. As I navigated that process, I thought, this is fantastic – another brick in the…
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For those of you who are not doctors or veterinarians for our beloved pets, have you ever been in an exam room when the technician brings in X-RAY results and posts them on the backlit thing and leaves you alone with them before the doctor arrives? I was in this situation a year or two ago. Looking at the image was like reading brail with my eyes – but that doesn’t stop me from trying. Oooh, what is that? Is this a problem? Is that out of whack? The doctor blew over what I was looking at because I was…
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