I read the book life after google in 2019, and it changed my view on technology. I listen to a lot of Joe Rogan as well. Before I read life after google, I though virtual reality and artificial intelligence would rapidly change the future.
This is because Joe Rogan speaks about this all the time. Elon musk always talks about this as well.
However, George Gilder in Life After Google speaks about how far behind these scary technologies are.
I think the coronavirus highlights this. If google, facebook, amazon and apple are so smart, how come they couldn’t be part of the coronavirus solution.
Google is said to be involved in contact tracing, but who cares. They should have been able to track hospitalizations and activity around the world and predict how this would take place. They should have alerted more people and more governments. It’s not like they don’t have access to our emails.
Same thing with facebook. Facebook invades everyone’s privacy. Why couldn’t they predict and warn people about this virus.
It’s not even about the tracking that these companies supposedly conduct. They also employ machine learning and artificial intelligence. Maybe they don’t have enough political power to make governments shift what they are doing, but they could alert companies to prepare for the virus. Then those companies might have time to change supply chains and start working on building PPE for medical personnel.
Additionally, amazon was not prepared and is struggling with shipping. Their algorithms should have picked up all this activity as well. I’m sure they rely on China for a lot of their “amazon basics” product lines.
I’m just amazed that all this new technology did nothing to help with the saving more lives.
