Tech companies are building tiny, personal AIs to keep your messages private

Science fiction tells us one day we’ll talk to our phones and computers like they’re people, as suggested in movies like Her and 2001: A Space Odyssey. But we’re now facing a different reality: Our digital lives aren’t managed by one entity, but rather a collection of AIs that gather information about how we type, what kind of media we like to see, and what we should be doing throughout the day.

Right now, a lot of these algorithms require too much computing power to run on phones and other smart devices—that’s part of the reason why the cloud has been so revolutionary. But a coming wave of advances in AI research and deployment will bring algorithms that require far less compute power, meaning we can carry them around on our smartphones, smartwatches, and smart belts, without sending personal information like texts back to the servers of Facebook and Google. This technology could allow a fresh start for privacy within messaging apps, especially now that users are beginning to understand the importance of end-to-end encryption on their personal messages.

Here's why tech has taken over our relationships

This is part of CNET's "It's Complicated" series about the role technology plays in our relationships.

If you had to explain dating in 2017 to a time traveler from the 1950s, what would you say?

"I would explain texting first, and how it takes five minutes now for people to decide they want to hook up," says comedian Nikki Glaser. "I would tell women, 'Buckle up, b***h, this is not going to be a fun ride.'"

Glaser, 32, has made a professional study of dating sites like Tinder and the hookup culture that experts say has reshaped many people's sex lives. It provides lots of fodder for her comedy routine.

For past generations, relationship milestones meant things like "going steady." Today's relationships can strike up after a few minutes of text chats.

And since nearly everything is done using an app on a phone, "you can have a relationship with someone and never hear their voice," Glaser says.

 

Net ​nostalgia: the online museums preserving dolphin gifs and spinning Comic Sans

Jason Scott is a “guerilla internet archivist”. Someone’s got to be. If you’ve got some content embedded in a site that’s about to disappear, then he and his team of coders and data engineers go in there and “Ocean’s Eleven” the joint. In the name of digital archaeology, they migrate as much data as they can to a safe harbour even as the main site goes down. “We swoop in and, to the best of our ability, take a snapshot,” he says.

Scott is interested in conserving the stuff we have forgotten has value. Increasingly, our culture plays itself out on the internet, yet even now we have a tendency to view what we do on there as trivial. Or we make the mistake of assuming that digital means for ever. “The problem is, the internet’s systems have been designed as though everything goes on indefinitely,” he says. “There are no agreed-upon shutdown procedures. When users die, what do you do? Because their accounts live on, and suddenly Facebook is telling you your dead friend also likes Snickers bars. Often, you don’t even know who’s running a site. It’s as if you didn’t know who was in charge of your water supply; then one day, it just stopped ...”