0'I've Seen the Future of Consumer AI, and it Doesn't Have One' (theregister.co.uk)	null/SLASHDOT/0102639856		70
i  Thursday September 06, 2018 @11:30PM (msmash)
i  from the there-is-no-spoon dept.
i
i    Andrew  Orlowski  of  The  Register  recounts  all  the gadgets
i    supercharged  with AI that he came across at IFA tradeshow last
i    week  --  and  wonders  what  value AI brought to the table. He
i    writes:  I  didn't see a blockchain toothbrush at IFA in Berlin
i    last  week, but I'm sure there was one lurking about somewhere.
i    With  30  vast  halls  to cover, I didn't look too hard for it.
i    But  I  did  see many things almost as tragic that no one could
i    miss  -- AI being squeezed into almost every conceivable bit of
i    consumer  electronics.  But none were convincing. If ever there
i    was  a  solution  looking  for  a problem, it's ramming AI into
i    gadgets  to  show  of a company's machine learning prowess. For
i    the  consumer  it  adds unreliability, cost and complexity, and
i    the  annoyance of being prompted. [...] Back to LG, which takes
i    2018's  prize  for  sticking  AI into a superfluous gadget. The
i    centrepiece  of  its AI efforts this year is a robot, ClOi. Put
i    Google  Assistant  or  Alexa  on  wheels,  and you have ClOi. I
i    asked  the  booth  person what exactly ClOi could do to be told
i    "it  can  take  notes  for your shopping list." Why wasn't this
i    miracle  of  the  Fourth Industrial Revolution let loose on the
i    LG  floor? I wondered -- a question answered by this account of
i    ClOi's   debut  at  CES  in  January.  Clearly  things  haven't
i    improved much -- this robot buddy was kept indoors.
i