I’m still smarting over the meltdown of Snapchat – the above Opinionator headline and post will haunt me for a long time.

•  I still have the app on my phone and check it every few days. The number of people I follow who remain active have dwindled. I haven’t posted anything on Snap recently. That said, I still love it – way more than Instagram. Why? It provides an unfiltered experience that is so much more fun than Instagram Stories. I am obviously in the minority.
• And for those of you who weren’t following me back in March 2016, the above snap taken at the Easter Parade on 5^th Avenue garnered 4.5MM views!! Clearly, that early success colored my opinion of how fabulous Snapchat could be. I never again hit the million view jackpot (sadly).

Now to a tech highlight: Anticipatory Design using AI (Algorithmic Intelligence). I still recall this outstanding presentation given by Sophie Kleber of Huge in June 2015. I had never given much thought to AI before then and now it’s all I can think about.

Read on below for more on why AI is finally being touted as the technology of our age. As big a deal as electricity was 100 years ago. And we are experiencing it every day although we are rarely conscious of it and how much it is improving our lives and our interactions with technology.

 

Since attending the Sophie Kleber presentation, I’ve written about AI numerous times but it was Sophie’s magical and mesmerizing explanation that got me hooked. The slide (above) where she spoke about how Amazon and Uber were using AI to anticipate what we would want to order or when we would want a car to pick us up, blew me away.

The goal is to create an ecosystem where a decision is never made—it happens automatically, without user input.

And now that I have become more attuned to AI’s usage, I get annoyed when companies don’t use it e.g. on some sites, if you don’t correctly spell a location or item, they tell you whatever you’re looking for doesn’t exist vs.  Google which will provide alternate spellings that you may have in mind.

Here are some Opinionator posts from the last year on AI with links to each underneath the images.