New iPhone This Week, AI Knows Your Sexual Orientation And More On This Week's CTRL ALT Delete Segment On CHOM 97.7 FM
Every Monday morning at 7:10 am, I am a guest contributor on CHOM 97.7 FM radio out of Montreal (home base). It’s not a long segment – about 5 to 10 minutes every week – about everything that is happening in the world of technology and digital media. The good folks at CHOM 97.7 FM are posting these segments weekly on iHeart Radio, if you’re interested in hearing more of me blathering away about what’s going on in the digital world. I’m really excited about this opportunity, because this is the radio station that I grew up on listening to, and it really is a fun treat to be invited to the Mornings Rock with Terry DiMonte morning show. The segment is called, CTRL ALT Delete with Mitch Joel.
This week we discussed:
With all eyes and ears are on Hurricane Irma this morning, tomorrow we are going to see what the next generation of smartphones will look like. Apple is officially scheduled to unveil the iPhone 8 on Tuesday. Of course everything is rumour and heresy, until Tim Cook hits the stage, but what we are hearing is that it will be called the iPhone X (celebrating ten years), it will have a facial unlock system (Face ID), 3D emojis, No home/physical button, and – what I’m personally hoping for – depth for mixed reality (augmented and virtual reality capabilites). With that, we may hear about a new Apple Watch, AirPods and much more!
Speaking of Face ID, a study from Stanford University found that a computer algorithm could correctly distinguish between gay and straight with up to 90%+ accuracy. Of course, this has raised a million question about the biological origins of sexual orientation, the ethics of facial-detection technology, and the potential for this kind of software to violate people’s privacy or be abused. So, it’s not just about this technology being able to help you unlock your phone. All of this information could be telling companies, governments (and whoever else buys/gets access to this data), much more than any of us previously imagined. Amazing technology or terrifying technology?
You would think that this makes us more reticent to take pictures? You would be wrong. While we tend to focus on how much video consumers are taking in, check this out: People will take 1.2 trillion photos this year, thanks to smartphones. According to estimates from InfoTrends, people will take a hundred billion more photos in 2017 than they did in 2016. With that, sales of digital cameras have drastically declined over the years (from 121.5 million in 2010 to an estimated 13 million in the first half of 2016) according to the Camera and Imaging Products Association. Still, because of ease and the quality of cameras in these smartphones, we’re snapping more than ever before!