Commentary: Google’s controversial AI-based Clips camera doesn’t seem to impress Tesla’s CEO.

Elon Musk isn’t sure about artificial intelligence.

He worries it could start World War III. He thinks it’s a far greater threat than North Korea. He wants it regulated immediately.

So when Google presented its new AI-based camera Google Clips last week, you might imagine that Musk wouldn’t be overly excited.

On Saturday, however, he seemed to accuse Google of a blatant disregard for privacy.

“This doesn’t even *seem* innocent,” he tweeted.

Clips, you see, works by using AI to instantly recognize faces of special interest to its owner and, when it spots those faces, takes candid pictures of them.

Without the face-owners necessarily knowing.

An LED light does flash to say the camera is on. There are, however, lots of those around the house that we happily ignore.

Google Home Mini sounds great but lacks vision
https://www.cnet.com/news/google-home-mini-review/

The Google Home Mini sounds better and looks better than the Echo Dot — but Google needs to innovate if it wants to catch Alexa.

The Good: The Google Home Mini is a stylish-looking speaker with surprisingly strong sound quality for its size. The Google Assistant is a capable Alexa competitor, especially thanks to its ability to search out detailed answers to a wide variety of questions.

The Bad: There isn’t much the Home Mini does that Alexa can’t do, too. It also lacks a line-out jack, and requires Chromecast Audio in order to connect with at external speaker setup.

The Bottom Line: The Google Home Mini is a great device, and a no-brainer for existing Google Home users — but it isn’t the Echo Dot-killer Google probably needs it to be.

Read more at https://www.whathifi.com/google/pixel-buds/review#UYPo8lcfW4dHjc7A.99

Google released a line of new products on Wednesday.
When the Google Pixel Buds are paired with a new handset, the Google Pixel 2, the earbuds can tap into Google Assistant.
In addition to the translation of 40 languages, Google Assistant can also alert users to notifications, send texts and give directions.

Google released a line of new products on Wednesday, including its first pair of premium wireless headphones, which can support live translation between languages.

When the Google Pixel Buds are paired with a new handset, the Google Pixel 2, the earbuds can tap into Google Assistant, Google’s artificially intelligent voice-activated product.

In addition to the translation of 40 languages, Google Assistant can also alert users to notifications, send texts and give directions. The translation feature can be conjured by saying “help me speak French,” or any other language, according to The Verge, which got a preview of the device.

Out of all the products Google launched at its big event this week, there’s one that should have Apple really worried.

No, it’s not the Pixel phones (though they certainly seem like worthy iPhone competitors) or the MacBook-like Pixelbook, it’s the Pixel Buds.

More than any other gadget Google launched, the $159 Pixel Buds (which, by the way, are already out of stock on Google’s store), perfectly encapsulate how Google can use it’s incredible AI advantage to beat Apple at its own game.

To be clear, this isn’t about whether the Pixel Buds, as they are right now, are better than AirPods.

But I’m talking about much more than just aesthetics, which are easily fixed (particularly now that Google has an extra 2,000 engineers from HTC onboard).

That demo is perhaps Google’s best example of how its new “AI-first” vision can completely and radically change its hardware — and its ability to compete with Apple. Pixel Buds, which have Google Assistant and real-time translation for 40 languages built right in, are, for now, Google’s best example of this vision.

But Pixel Buds are only the beginning.

The new Pixel Buds borrow a lot of ideas from Apple’s AirPods: they have a new, easier way to pair with your phone, they come in a little battery case, they use touch controls, and they have tight integration with an intelligent assistant. They’re also priced exactly the same, at $159, and are coming out in November.

On the other hand, Pixel Buds are neckbuds, not truly wireless earbuds. They lack some of the technical whiz-bang of the AirPods, like auto-detecting when they’re in your ear. The choices Google made with the design of Pixel Buds speak to Google’s emerging values when it comes to its hardware products: be pragmatic and lean on Google’s core technologies whenever possible.

Neckbuds aren’t cool, but having headphones sitting around your neck all the time is definitely convenient.

AI-powered translation piped through wireless earbuds is another big step towards the removal of the language barrier

Alongside the new Pixel 2 smartphones Google unveiled on Wednesday night, the company also launched a set of Bluetooth earbuds called the Pixel Buds with one standout feature: instant translation between 40 different languages using a Pixel smartphone.

In a live demo on stage, the Pixel Buds were shown translating short phrases back and forth between English and Swedish using Google Translate running on a Pixel 2 smartphone.

“It’s like you’ve got your own personal translator with you everywhere you go. Say you’re in Little Italy, and you want to order your pasta like a pro. All you have to do is hold down on the right earbud and say, ‘Help me speak Italian’,” wrote Adam Champy, Google’s product manager for the Pixel Buds, on the company’s blog.

While the demonstration was impressive, this isn’t the first time Google has rolled out the ability to do near real-time translation back and forth between different languages, and it isn’t the first firm to put that capability into a set of earbuds.

Google announced on stage a few numbers to update its progress on its hardware program – the company said that it’s sold over 55 million Chromecast devices, including Chromecasts and hardware with Chromecast built-in and that it has built up a database of over 100 million answers for users via Google Assistant, its voice-powered AI software.

The other success metric that Google noted was that its Google WiFi mesh networking router is the top-seller in that category in both the U.S. and Canada. It’s still a relatively young category, but there are lots of entrants now, so that’s impressive.

Sundar Pichai says the future of Google is AI. But can he fix the algorithm?
‘We feel huge responsibility’ to get information right
https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/4/16405174/ceo-sundar-pichai-interview-google-ai-artificial-intelligence-interface

Unbeknownst to me, at the very moment on Monday morning when I was asking Google CEO Sundar Pichai about the biggest ethical concern for AI today, Google’s algorithms were promoting misinformation about the Las Vegas shooting.