Technologies

Let’s Not Forget About Wordle

The feelings we had earlier this year are needed more than ever.

About 100 years ago — or, that’s how long it feels — we were all together, playing Wordle. Well, we weren’t technically together. We were in sunny places, snowy places, other countries, commuting, staying at home. We were together, though. In a sense. And we weren’t screaming.

Little score grids popping up everywhere, instead of historical face filters or randomly generated AI art, or snippets of chatbot-generated text. These grids, these scores. Wordle swept through an Omicron winter where flights were canceled, trips postponed, returns to work delayed again. It was like bread-baking 2.0. Just another viral pandemic moment.

The game was acquired by The New York Times in early February, and I was ready to say goodbye to a moment I always suspected would end sometime. And it did: Scores stopped being shared. Players dwindled. I eventually stopped playing regularly sometime in the late spring, I don’t know when.

I want to go back to that moment. I remember what was going on: I was depressed. I felt disconnected from friends, from family, from anyone. I put random things on Facebook so I could feel like I did something, for just a few moments, to reach out. For a while, it was random food shots of me putting chili crisp in oatmeal. Then it was Wordle scores. I found a little community of old friends who wrote back and shared theirs. We nodded our virtual heads. We connected, just a bit.

These moments may seem frivolous. They’re not. At the end of 2022, where are we? Twitter has been acquired, gutted, and is slowly being transformed. Migrations away from Twitter (or Facebook) to constellations of new platforms, strange new worlds, places like Mastodon or Hive or Post. Social media, at the end of 2022, feels like it’s either on its last legs or struggling to be reborn as something strange, new and — yes, to me — alien.

With everything that 2022 ended up becoming, something like Wordle feels like a ridiculous little footnote, utterly unimportant, perhaps completely pointless. I still think of it as a little spark of connection. A hope for making people feel like they can reach out to each other without hating or escalating or destroying. The whole original idea of social media that seemed so appealing, maybe, a long time ago, was that it could bring familiar faces together and, for just a few moments, create a sensation of connection. My games of Wordle, along with a few special trips into VR with friends, and a few lingering Zooms, were some of the few moments that did that. For all we’re rushing out to see people and connect again in the real world, we forget the moments when connecting virtually actually worked.

I read an article in The Atlantic the other day that spoke deeply to me, about how we’re haunted by the ghosts of 2019. I am. Life in 2022, trying to go back to «normal,» has felt uncanny. I commute now. I’ve gone on flights. I’ve gone to the UK again. None of it felt normal. Some of it felt familiar. Echoes of the old, overlaps of the new.

Slowly but surely, we’re returning to a strange version of the world we once knew — or trying to. How do I move forward here?

I hope, in our rush to return to «normal,» we stay connected to the strange rituals that brought us together in our lowest moments. It doesn’t have to be Wordle — that’s just a word game gone viral. But as we reinvent how we communicate online — via social media or metaverses — I’ll take any help I can get. Show me how we could reconnect and not feel alienated. Wordle was lightning in a bottle, and even though I’ve said goodbye to what it was in that moment, I’ll always be searching for that feeling again.

Technologies

Google races to put Gemini at the center of Android before Apple’s AI reboot

Google is using its latest Android rollout to position Gemini as the AI layer across phones, Chrome, laptops and cars.

Google is using its latest Android rollout to make Gemini less of a chatbot and more of an operating layer across the phone, browser, car and laptop, just weeks before Apple is expected to show its own Gemini-powered Apple Intelligence reboot at WWDC.
Ahead of its Google I/O developer conference next week, the company previewed a number of Android updates, including AI-powered app automation, a smarter version of Chrome on Android, new tools for creators, a redesigned Android Auto experience, and a sweeping set of new security features.
Alphabet is counting on Gemini to help Google compete directly with OpenAI and Anthropic in the market for artificial intelligence models and services, while also serving as the AI backbone across its expansive portfolio of products, including Android. Meanwhile, Gemini is powering part of Apple’s new AI strategy, giving Google a role in the iPhone maker’s reset even as it races to prove its own version of personal AI on the phone is further along.
Sameer Samat, who oversees Google’s Android ecosystem, told CNBC that Google is rebuilding parts of Android around Gemini Intelligence to help users complete everyday tasks more easily.
“We’re transitioning from an operating system to an intelligence system,” he said.
As part of Tuesday’s announcements. Google said Gemini Intelligence will be able to move across apps, understand what’s on the screen and complete tasks that would normally require a user to jump between multiple services. That means Android is moving beyond the traditional assistant model, where users ask a question and get an answer, and acting more like an agent.
For instance, Google says Gemini can pull relevant information from Gmail, build shopping carts and book reservations. Samat gave the example of asking Gemini to look at the guest list for a barbecue, build a menu, add ingredients to an Instacart list and return for approval before checkout.
A big concern surrounding agentic AI involves software taking action on a user’s behalf without permissions. Samat said Gemini will come back to the user before completing a transaction, adding, “the human is always in the loop.”
Four months after announcing its Gemini deal with Google, Apple is under pressure to show a more capable version of Apple Intelligence, which has been a relative laggard on the market. Apple has long framed privacy, hardware integration and control of the user experience as its advantages.
Google’s Android push is designed to show it can bring AI deeper into the device experience while still giving users control over what Gemini can see, where it can act and when it needs confirmation.
The app automation features will roll out in waves, starting with the latest Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel phones this summer, before expanding across more Android devices, including watches, cars, glasses and laptops later this year.
The company is also redesigning Android Auto around Gemini, turning the car into another major surface for its assistant. Android Auto is in more than 250 million cars, and Google says the new release includes its biggest maps update in a decade and Gemini-powered help with tasks like ordering dinner while driving.
Alphabet’s AI strategy has been embraced by Wall Street, which has pushed the company’s stock price up more than 140% in the past year, compared to Apple’s roughly 40% gain. Investors now want to see how Gemini can become more central to the products people use every day.
WATCH: Alphabet briefly tops Nvidia after report of $200 billion Anthropic cloud deal

Technologies

Waymo recalls 3,800 robotaxis after glitch allowed some vehicles to ‘drive into standing water’

Waymo issued a voluntary recall of about 3,800 of its robotaxis to fix software issues that could allow them to drive into flooded roadways.

Waymo is recalling about 3,800 robotaxis in the U.S. to fix software issues that could allow them to “drive onto a flooded roadway,” according to a letter on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website.
The voluntary recall is for Waymo vehicles that use the company’s fifth and sixth generation automated driving systems (or ADS), the U.S. auto safety regulator said in the letter posted Tuesday.
Waymo autonomous vehicles in Austin, Texas, were seen on camera driving onto a flooded street and stalling, requiring other drivers to navigate around them. It’s the latest example of a safety-related issue for the Alphabet-owned AV unit that’s rapidly bolstering its fleet of vehicles and entering new U.S. markets.
Waymo has drawn criticism for its vehicles failing to yield to school buses in Austin, and for the performance of its vehicles during widespread power outages in San Francisco in December, when robotaxis halted in traffic, causing gridlock.
The company said in a statement on Tuesday that it’s “identified an area of improvement regarding untraversable flooded lanes specific to higher-speed roadways,” and opted to file a “voluntary software recall” with the NHTSA.
“Waymo provides over half a million trips every week in some of the most challenging driving environments across the U.S., and safety is our primary priority,” the company said.
Waymo added that it’s working on “additional software safeguards” and has put “mitigations” in place, limiting where its robotaxis operate during extreme weather, so that they avoid “areas where flash flooding might occur” in periods of intense rain.
WATCH: Waymo launches new autonomous system in Chinese-made vehicle

Technologies

Qualcomm tumbles 13% as semiconductor stocks retreat from historic AI-fueled surge

Semiconductor equities reversed sharply after a broad AI-driven advance, with Qualcomm suffering its worst day since 2020 amid inflation concerns and rising oil prices.

Semiconductor stocks fell sharply on Tuesday, reversing course after an extensive rally that had expanded the artificial intelligence investment theme well past Nvidia and driven the industry to unprecedented levels.

Qualcomm plunged 13% and was on track for its steepest single-day decline since 2020. Intel shed 8%, while On Semiconductor and Skyworks Solutions each lost more than 6%. The iShares Semiconductor ETF, which benchmarks the overall sector, fell 5%.

The sell-off came after a key gauge of consumer prices came in above forecasts, and as conflict in Iran pushed crude oil higher—prompting investors to shift away from riskier assets.

The preceding advance had widened the AI opportunity set beyond longtime industry leader Nvidia, which for much of the past several years had largely carried the market to new peaks on its own.

Explosive appetite for central processing units, along with the graphics processing units that power large language models, has sent chipmakers to all-time highs.

Market participants are wagering that the shift from AI model training to autonomous agents will lift demand for additional AI hardware. Among the beneficiaries are memory chip producers, which are raising prices as supply remains tight.

Micron Technology slid 6%, and Sandisk cratered 8%. Sandisk’s stock has surged more than six times over since January.