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  • How AI is killing smartphone apps in China

    From Lawrence D?Oliveiro@3:633/10 to All on Friday, August 07, 2026 08:36:32
    Here?s an interesting possibility for the future of smartphones <https://www.computerworld.com/article/4203560/how-ai-in-china-is-killing-smartphone-apps.html>:
    get rid of apps, and just rely on the device?s built-in ?agentic? AI capabilities to get stuff done. Of course, they would be powerful
    enough to do everything that an app might do, and more.

    Would you call them ?smarterphones?? Or perhaps ?AI feature phones?,
    since they go back to the old feature-phone model of just having the
    built-in software and nothing more. And yet, of course, they are
    capable of getting more done than a regular smartphone -- assuming the
    AI works reliably enough.

    And some of them might even be ?robot phones?, where there are
    physical components on the phone (like a high-definition camera on a
    gimbal) that can be operated by the AI.

    And then there are these coming ?AI wearables? ...

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From D Finnigan@3:633/10 to All on Friday, August 07, 2026 11:23:49
    On 8/7/26 3:36 AM, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
    Here?s an interesting possibility for the future of smartphones <https://www.computerworld.com/article/4203560/how-ai-in-china-is-killing-smartphone-apps.html>:
    get rid of apps, and just rely on the device?s built-in ?agentic? AI capabilities to get stuff done. Of course, they would be powerful
    enough to do everything that an app might do, and more.

    Why stop there? Get rid of cell phones, and just rely on people's
    capabilities to get stuff done. Of course, they would be powerful enough
    to do everything an app might do, and more. :-P

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Scott Dorsey@3:633/10 to All on Friday, August 07, 2026 14:12:36
    D Finnigan <dog_cow@macgui.com> wrote:
    Why stop there? Get rid of cell phones, and just rely on people's >capabilities to get stuff done. Of course, they would be powerful enough
    to do everything an app might do, and more. :-P

    I strongly support you and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
    --scott
    --
    "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Jeffrey Bagely@3:633/10 to All on Friday, August 07, 2026 23:33:29
    On Fri, 7 Aug 2026 11:23:49 -0500, D Finnigan wrote:

    On 8/7/26 3:36 AM, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
    Here?s an interesting possibility for the future of smartphones
    <https://www.computerworld.com/article/4203560/how-ai-in-china-is- killing-smartphone-apps.html>:
    get rid of apps, and just rely on the device?s built-in ?agentic? AI
    capabilities to get stuff done. Of course, they would be powerful
    enough to do everything that an app might do, and more.

    Why stop there? Get rid of cell phones, and just rely on people's capabilities to get stuff done. Of course, they would be powerful enough
    to do everything an app might do, and more. :-P

    Hear me out, we stop wasting time making the computers understand us
    better, and just make us understand the computers more. Then we don't need
    to worry about the computer doing everything wrong correctly

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Nuno Silva@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, August 08, 2026 02:08:01
    On 2026-08-07, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

    And then there are these coming ?AI wearables? ...

    I have an intradermal AI wearable in my head, does that count?

    --
    Nuno Silva

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Lawrence D?Oliveiro@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, August 08, 2026 01:20:15
    On Fri, 7 Aug 2026 23:33:29 -0000 (UTC), Jeffrey Bagely wrote:

    Then we don't need to worry about the computer doing everything
    wrong correctly

    I wonder what that would look like ...

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Retrograde@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, August 09, 2026 10:44:46
    On Sat, 08 Aug 2026 02:08:01 +0100
    Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    On 2026-08-07, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
    And then there are these coming ?AI wearables? ...
    I have an intradermal AI wearable in my head, does that count?
    Nuno Silva

    Presumably, it's actual "I" not "AI" in fact! To be fair, not all
    models of human do however. Many models of human require an upgrades,
    as best as I can tell.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Mike Spencer@3:633/10 to All on Monday, August 10, 2026 14:33:04
    Retrograde <fungus@amongus.com.invalid> writes:

    On Sat, 08 Aug 2026 02:08:01 +0100
    Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    On 2026-08-07, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

    And then there are these coming "AI wearables" ...
    I have an intradermal AI wearable in my head, does that count?
    Nuno Silva

    Presumably, it's actual "I" not "AI" in fact! To be fair, not all
    models of human do however. Many models of human require an upgrades,
    as best as I can tell.

    So how do we embed resentment, feelings of inferiority and
    shadenfreude in a neural net so that "AI" entities can can act
    according to those influences in preference to acting based on fact or
    "best practice"?

    Oh, wait! Since the weights in the NN matrices on which "AI" funtions
    are probabalistic inferences from Everything That Has Been Said on the Internet, how do we ensure that such embedding *doesn't* happen
    invisibly?

    --
    Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Retrograde@3:633/10 to All on Wednesday, August 26, 2026 21:29:50
    On 10 Aug 2026 14:33:04 -0300
    Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote:

    Presumably, it's actual "I" not "AI" in fact! To be fair, not all
    models of human do however. Many models of human require an upgrades,
    as best as I can tell.

    So how do we embed resentment, feelings of inferiority and
    shadenfreude in a neural net so that "AI" entities can can act
    according to those influences in preference to acting based on fact or
    "best practice"?

    If we could do that, the software models would be better behaved than
    the wetware models we've got lurching around in real life ...

    Oh, wait! Since the weights in the NN matrices on which "AI" funtions
    are probabalistic inferences from Everything That Has Been Said on the Internet, how do we ensure that such embedding *doesn't* happen
    invisibly?

    Well, Elon's Grok has already declared himself Mecha-H*tl*r so I
    suppose it's too late. Also suggests Usenet posts have been
    incorporated into someone's LLM. [1]


    [1] asterisked because a previous post using that word did not
    propagate through German news servers, which I thought was
    interesting. I believe there are laws against it or something.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Lawrence D?Oliveiro@3:633/10 to All on Thursday, August 27, 2026 08:47:46
    On Wed, 26 Aug 2026 21:29:50 -0600, Retrograde wrote:

    [1] asterisked because a previous post using that word did not
    propagate through German news servers, which I thought was
    interesting. I believe there are laws against it or something.

    Do they block ?Shicklgruber??

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)