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On the question of smart appliances, etc. being ai-enabled: while I suspect that this is a directionally accurate prediction, I expect that we will see many appliance manufacturers seize upon this and try to pivot to being an AI/tech company, akin to how Ford and GM have tried, and failed, to become electric car companies. Not for nothing are the leading EV companies tech-native.

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Totally. Another prediction I have is that AI is going to be a source of immense creative destruction, favoring new companies in many industries that are founded on the assumptions of AI rather than having to bolt AI on to existing corporate structures.

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Yup, that makes sense.

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"Imagine an AI-enabled urban first responder service. Its patrolmen might be dense networks of cheap, autonomous drones, or perhaps one day, robots. They could patrol for crime," the AI-citizen-arrest, what's not to like about that.

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I wonder if you read the piece? I am talking about AI first responder services *purchased by governments*

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There are significant assumptions in this perspective, some of which are acknowledged. One major one is that the developers / owners of the services will relinquish control over the systems and the data. Too many services today monetize private data as a key feature of their economic model (Google, anyone?) another is that an algorithmic decision model would always produce an output, ignoring the deep work of Kurt Godel who proved that any system of logical inference is either inconsistent or incomplete.

Finally, these forecasts always focus on efficiency, and ignore the tradeoff with resiliency. Our efficient economy stumbled mightily when it was disrupted by COVID.

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