Waze Releases Groups Feature, Social Positioning Takes Another Step Forward

Waze, the start-up that crowd-sources map creation and refinement by turning it into a game for smartphone users, has added a killer new feature to its latest release - Waze Groups. A next logical step in the LBS app feature war, grouping now allows Waze cliques such as families taking trips, friends organizing pub crawls, cab companies mapping cab positions, road builders transforming terrain, realtors coordinating their sales agents, and so forth, to map and view their respective positions in real-time. Members of Waze groups can also view status updates posted by group members so that messages that pertain to their experience can be shared intuitively.

All in all, this appears to be a smart strategic move by company looking to up its influx of user generated content while at the same time grabbing a bigger chunk of the LBS market. Expect to see more and more advanced geo-grouping features from companies like Foursquare, Gowalla, MyTown, Loopt, Yelp, etc, in the near future. Most probably have grouping features in the works. But those who don't will probably scramble to react once they realize this maneuver could threaten their core.

It's fun to watch the fast pace of the geosocial mobile apps! My bet is that it'll accelerate as more entrants jump into this hot new space.

Building Human-Level A.I. Will Require Billions of People

The Great AI hunger appears poised to quickly replace and then exceed the income flows it has been eliminating. If we follow the money, we can confidently expect millions, then billions of machine-learning support roles to emerge in the very near-term, majorly limiting if not reversing widespread technological unemployment. Human-directed machine learning has emerged as the dominant process for the creation of Weak AI such as language translation, computer vision, search, drug discovery and logistics management. I ncreasingly, it appears Strong AI , aka AGI or "human-level" AI, will be achieved by bootstrapping machine learning at scale, which will require billions of humans in-the-loop . How does human-in the-loop machine learning work? The process of training a neural net to do something useful, say the ability to confidently determine whether a photo has been taken indoors or outside, r...

Donald Trump, Entertainer-in-Chief

The days of the presidential presidency are behind us. JFK was the first TV President . He and his successors exuded a distinctly presidential vibe as they communicated confidently to the masses, primarily through color video, usually behind a podium or in high-power settings, on a monthly or sometimes weekly basis. Donald Trump is the first Web & Reality TV President. He spent a decade as host and producer of the hit show The Apprentice and exudes a distinctly colloquial vibe across cable and the web. Trump prefers titanic business settings like board rooms and communicates to the masses at a daily or even hourly rate, even after the election. Twitter is his pulpit. Trump is a seasoned, self-aware, master content producer AND actor. In sports, the equivalent is a player/coach, a Peyton Manning or LeBron. He's calculatedly sloppy and unpredictable, which appears to boost his authenticity and watchability. Most impo...

IBM Watson AI XPrize Pits AI vs. Human/AI Teams

XPRize and IBM have announced the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE , a multi-stage Cognitive Computing Competition with a $5 million purse that challenges "teams from around the world to develop and demonstrate how humans can collaborate with powerful cognitive technologies to tackle some of the world’s grand challenges." Interestingly, the competition will be open to human/AI hybrid and exclusively AI entrants alike. The contest will culminate in 2020 after a series of IBM's annual "World of Watson" prelim events and draw attention to the human-empowering aspects of Artificial Intelligence. May the smartest neural array carry the day. Pre-registration is open now at xprize.org/AI , and detailed guidelines will be announced on May 15, 2016. TED Blog XPrize Announcement

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