In the future, personalized AI assistants will use knowledge of our behaviors to inform us of goings-on and do chores, and as we grow older, they’ll provide companionship and assistance when caregivers aren’t around. These assistants will not only chart our calendars and supply answers to questions, but will help administer medical treatments, assist us […]
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Earlier today we tweeted out that we were starting a new newsletter called Lady Bits with no context — that was a mistake, and we’re sorry. We’re actually launching a newsletter by women, for women, highlighting women’s stories, in STEM and beyond. We want this to be a lighthearted and funny way to engage with […]
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With legions of data at its disposal, Netflix churns out original shows faster than anyone with a job — or a life — can consume. And while they’ve got a serious shot at the Oscars this year with Roma, Netflix has served us some real stinkers — and I’m here to save you from them. While […]
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Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Artificial intelligence (AI) will eliminate jobs, encode biases against ethnicities and genders, and automate war machines. And it might just lead to a third world war. Those and other dire AI predictions resurface continuously in reports and speeches by analysts, celebrities, and prominent researchers alike — admittedly not […]
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Last week was our beloved/behated daily newsletter‘s first birthday. We published an article looking back at the seven things we learned from Big Spam’s first year. In it, we talked about how people hate change, our Las Vegas casino aesthetic, and our favorite subject lines. As soon as we hit publish, we realized we’d made […]
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One year ago today, our daily newsletter, Big Spam, was born. And oh what a year it’s been. Big Spam, if you don’t know, is a sassy love/hate letter to technology that we handwrite daily. Besides for delivering the most important tech news of the day, BS also has polls, disgusting GIFs, puzzles, and artist […]
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In case you somehow missed the dire predictions regarding artificial intelligence (AI): AI is coming for our jobs. Over 10 percent of positions currently occupied by humans will be eliminated by cheaper, more efficient automated replacements, and experts agree AI could make redundant as many as 75 million jobs by 2025. With new reports sounding […]
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Parents are weird — you love them, but also want them as physically far from you as possible. Until you miss them, or want them to help you with laundry, or want to drink their expensive alcohol, and then you’re back on their couch for a month, and their biological attachment to you prevents them […]
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After clearing out my emails and private messages, I realized I’m never sorry — but every other thread or message I send starts with an apology. “Sorry to bug you!” “I was just wondering…” “…Totally fine if not.” Why do I apologize for existing in every email I send? I saw a tweet over the weekend, and […]
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Driverless cars remain on a slow but steady march toward widespread deployment. This week proved as much. On Tuesday, Google spinoff Waymo became the first to obtain a driverless testing permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). A 40-strong fleet of fully autonomous Chrysler Pacifica minivans — overseen by remote operators — will […]
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Credit: Works by Nicole He, Tj Hughes, Rachel Rose, and Hyphen labs (Edited) We sometimes have new media artists take over our daily newsletter, Big Spam. If you like what you’ve read, you can subscribe here. Hi everyone! Hope you’re doing well, today I’m going to do what every newsletter swears they won’t do and […]
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The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced this week that it would invest $1 billion in a new college of computer engineering: the Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing. It’s the single largest investment in artificial intelligence (AI) by a U.S. academic institution to date. And when the new building hosts its first classes in 2022, […]
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If you work at a company with remote workers or just a buttload of employees, odds are you’re using Slack to communicate. The work chat giant has all but completely taken over as the default mode of business communication, surpassing the fond tradition of tracing notes to one another in cocaine dust on the desk. […]
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This week, Amazon held a September hardware event — the Seattle company’s second — in its gorgeous new urban botanical garden, The Spheres, where it refreshed its Echo smart speaker lineup (including the Dot, Plus, and Show), unveiled new appliances and accessories (the Echo Wall Clock, AmazonBasics Microwave, Echo Link, Echo Link Amp, Amazon Smart […]
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The inevitable march toward automation continues, analysts from the McKinsey Global Institute and from Tata Communications wrote in separate reports this week. Artificial intelligence’s growth comes as no surprise — a survey from Narrative Science and the National Business Research Institute conducted earlier this year found that 61 percent of businesses implemented AI in 2017, […]
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Let me set the scene for you. It’s 2010, my family and I have one shared PC that takes thirty minutes to load the login page, the internet makes a weird sound when it’s switched on, all four of us in the house have a flip phone — and we share one phone charger… My […]
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It all started with a tweet. A really really good tweet: I got on a plane today and everyone was scrolling instagram but not liking things. I wanted to grab the intercom and remind everyone that likes are free and unlimited and everyone loves getting them. — James Hamblin (@jameshamblin) August 21, 2018 Do you […]
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