Phil Smeeton's Tech Thinking Blog

Humanoid robots are likely to become very useful to human owners as the humanoid robot’s capabilities increase and improve. For example, how about a humanoid robot that can do all your housework, prepare meals, groom your family and any pets, gardening, cleaning windows, fixing stuff, playing ball with little johnny and babysitting whilst you are out at the opera? Once you are the owner of a humanoid robot you will probably become interested in extending the skills of the robot, having some new ones developed or downloaded into the humanoid robot’s memory.  Examples of additional skills might include, high end cooking skills, make up application, mixing drinks, playing musical instruments, creating portrait art paintings, photography, movie creation, playing card games.

Human relationships are important, human relationships can vary in terms of success and problems, challenges etc. All these facts make the idea of a perfectly behaved intelligent humanoid robot relationship partner very appealing in today’s society.   Given the myriads of challenges faced by humans today, humanoid companions can potentially provide help, support, therapy, friendship, entertainment, practical help. Humanoid’s will not judge, criticise, hate, annoy or irritate once the user’s requirements have been uploaded into the processor. A bigger picture view is to use humanoids to provide therapy services in the home. The humanoid could say something like: I notice from your health data today you are having a great day today, well done.

AI first approach to the mobile OS One possible and potentially highly desirable implementation is to have a permanent Gen AI prompt experience on the home screen of the mobile os. Another potential improvement is to have gen ai dynamically create the homescreen of the mobile os, a phone os that learns and becomes smarter and more effective as the user in effect trains the device. In terms of screen real estate for a permanent Gen AI prompt, I would say 50% with the other half devoted to a dynamic ai generated gui. The philosophy of the mobile os is 'it's almost never the same interface twice, but learns about the apps I want to use and when I want to use them'.

I viewed a Google YouTube short of Elon Musk getting his hair cut by an optimus humanoid robot and I thought about how impressive it is to have a skilled robot. Also, after a short discussion with some automotive professionals the topic of trust came up with reference to autonomous vehicles, “would you trust it?” They said. Well I thought that trust can be increased in stages by having the humanoid robot carry out riskier tasks, for example optimus might perform  a perfect straight razor shave  I'm sure Elon and others will be happy to volunteer once the optimus has been perfected. Happy holidays and a super prosperous 2025!

For centuries companies have been built by employing smart people with ability, some leaders will tell you that the quality of the human employees is paramount to the success of a business. In current times employees intelligence can be augmented by AI and in particular Gen AI and it's about how well the employee can use gen AI to extend their human capabilities or make up for any deficiencies/weaknesses. How much weighting should the average employee give to the results of gen ai prompts? Are the employees generally rewarded or admonished for relying on gen ai? Is there more credit given to ideas that have been created by a human mind only or does the use of gen ai matter? Should every business have a gen ai usage policy? This post was created without the direct use of gen ai.

Some years ago the tech industry went through an era of supplying users with plastic snap on cases and covers for their devices, they proved to be very popular with those that want to change the appearance of their phone regularly. My post is about the next generation of smart phone covers, higher quality and designed by fashion experts for appearance and branding, the retail price of one of these covers is probably around £100-200 each. The materials of the next generation cover will be finer materials like metals, etched with the branding and also maybe some precious metals. The smartphones should be designed at the factory to accept these higher quality covers with a precision fit. The fact is that a lot of users wish to change the visual characteristics of their device and feel limited by a permanent appearance.