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A week in retrospect…

Recently got a dog although you “don’t really have the time” for it?

Do not fret, irresponsible dog owners — AI’s got your back.

Now you can leave your pet unattended for hours, possibly days, and not have to deal with the slightest remorse. Go enjoy that weekend at a ski resort without leaving your apartment keys with a friend. When you return home, this AI-powered dog trainer will have your pet obedient and ready for a flawless Instagram photo session.

I guess the important question here is whose orders your pet will obey. Good news, Skynet — Now you have dogs on your side.

On a more serious note…

This week, the Swiss town of Davos hosted the annual World Economic Forum. This year’s edition put, again, much of its focus on technology.

As the meeting marked its 50th anniversary, the organisers wanted to reflect on how much technology has changed everything in the past half century. Experts at the Forum’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution called for careful and ethical use of emerging technologies, while outlining 9 reasons to be optimistic about tech in 2020.

Taking advantage of the media spotlight ahead of the event, Microsoft made a pledge to remove all of the carbon it has emitted since the company was founded in 1975. All that by 2050. That goes way beyond Amazon’s pledge to be carbon neutral by 2040.

Ha! Take that, Jeff. The cloud wars keep raging — Ironically, this time the battle is over actual (CO2) clouds.

Meanwhile, in another part of Europe…

The EU is considering a 5-year ban on the use of facial recognition technology in public spaces, citing concerns over data privacy and the potential nefarious uses of a technology that’s not yet fully understood. Caution is good. At least as long as it is to allow for enough time for companies and governments to establish regulations and protocols that protect us citizens.

Google and Microsoft are already wrangling over the proposed ban. Microsoft, which happens to sell this technology to governments and state agencies, is, not surprisingly, against the ban. On the other side of the ring, Google is advocating for the ban, in a clear effort to get on the good side of the EU after growing signs of the Union’s mistrust of the Internet giant.

Taking a more subtle approach to AI, Apple has paid $200 million for the AI start-up Xnor.ai, a company specialising in on-device AI. The acquisition reinforces Apple’s strategy to build an AI that operates within the device, rather than in the cloud, to achieve greater levels of privacy and security.

All in all, this has been the week of AI. Even Davos jumped on the AI bandwagon by making available an AI toolkit for corporate boards.

Oh, and —

Remember last week’s service cut for Windows 7 and its potential security ramifications? Well, not even a week later, Microsoft is announcing a patch for an Internet Explorer security bug that is already being targeted by attackers.

The problem? You guessed it. MS doesn’t offer support for Windows 7 anymore, so the old OS won’t get the patch. Oopsie!

And so it begins….

A week in retrospect…

Surprise, surprise! It has been another busy week in the world of tech. Elon Musk seems to have put his flamethrowing days behind and is now set on making his Teslas talk to nearby pedestrians. He didn’t go into much detail about what they’ll actually say, though he did confirm they will be able to fart in people’s general direction.

Classic billionaire joke.

On a more serious note — and in what effectively proposes a major shift in how we approach AI — U.S. researchers announced this week that they have successfully created the first biological robot. The Xenobot is made from frog stem cells and powered by evolutionary algorithms. It can also heal itself. Potential applications are certainly sci-fi worthy: micro-plastic cleaning bots, highly targeted drug delivery…

However, the researchers are hoping to use these robots to understand the interaction and communication between cells. After all, the human body as a whole is one of the most developed and effective forms of collective intelligence known to us.

Just imagine what could be achieved by uncovering its secrets and applying them to the advancement of robotics and AI.

RIP Windows 7….

Nothing new here — As of Tuesday, Microsoft is finally discontinuing support for what some consider the company’s best OS to date. Beyond such considerations, the phase-out leaves a good chunk of Windows users vulnerable to security breaches and other nasty hassles. Aware that some business-critical applications only run on Windows 7, Microsoft is offering to continue support for the old OS iteration until 2023. At a cost, of course.

Ironically, this happened the same week we discovered that the NSA alerted Microsoft of a security bug involving CryptoAPI that affects millions of Windows 10 computers.

We’d be curious to hear what you cybersecurity experts think could be the worst potential complications following the Windows 7 service cut. What are your thoughts?

Well, guess who’s not going to be happy with Google’s decision to end third-party cookies by 2022. Here’s a hint: our blue, furry friend above is not alone in this one.

As Google wrestles with Chrome user demands for greater privacy, it risks compromising the advertising-based revenue model that has served as the foundation of its empire. Folks at the Internet giant are already rushing to calm down advertisers while proposing they all work together to build an alternative that meets both privacy and profitability concerns.

What do you think could substitute third-party cookies and increase user privacy at the same time?

Last but not least — New developments coming straight from the front lines of the cloud wars.

Microsoft unveiled new ad tools for retailers at New York’s NRF, one of which Home Depot has already been using for the past year. The result of Microsoft’s acquisition last August of NY-based PromoteIQ, the new Microsoft PromoteIQ will allow retailers to promote products by combining intent-based data with audience insights.

The immediate goal is clear: to help MS customers increase sales at scale. The main goal? To grab some of Amazon’s cloud market share by pushing services to retailers who’d rather not deal with Mr. Bezos and his e-commerce monopoly.