Here am I on Amazon eyeing a gorgeous Dell computer monitor. I was curious about its IPS technology. So I asked Rufus, Amazon’s name for its omniscient AI wizard. In seconds, Riufus explained the technology of IPS and then — wait for this — it told me it would pare well with the ThinkPad laptop I had bought from Amazon last October. .
Read that again. It knew I had bought from Amazon. It knew what I had bought. And it encouraged me to buy the next thing.
This is an all-knowing salesperson with the buying history of millions of Amazon customers crammed into its awesome brain — ready to be plucked and mined instantly. And I’m guessing it’s living in a billion dollar data center somewhere.
You wanted an example of AI in action? You couldn’t ask for a better example. I would not have bought that monitor without Rufus’ encouragement. I have monitors up the whazu. For your very own monitor, click here.
Most companies are light years behind Amazon and Rufus. On my favorite websites that feature stuff I like, I get pitched women’s clothing. I get emailed subscriptions to magazines I already subscribe to. I have a favorite jean website, which directs me to gargantuan sizes in designs I hate. Delta hasn’t figured out that I have a seat I like in the class I like on the plane I like.
I like buying. I’ll buy stuff every day I don’t need. Susan says I don’t need anything, and should throw out what i have in my stuffed closet. She’s right, of course. But I get pleasure out of buying neat gadgets and clothes with special features — like super-comfortable old men’s jeans.
Of all my vendors, only Amazon has figured out Harry’s madnesses.
Susan says I should give all my stuff to the local thrift shop. Good idea. There’s a catch. I walk by the thrift shop’s windows. I eye something appealing. I buy it. It’s cheap. I proudly wear it home. As I preen around our living room, Susan tells she knows why I like the garment. Why? Because it’s the very garment I donated to the thrift store several weeks earlier.
Now I know why it fits so well.
The world is full of people who wake up with a dream, “What the world really needs is a …..” The next week they’re on Shark Tank. And the following week they’re flush with money to pursue their dreams. In a country of over 340 million people, there’s very little stuff you can’t sell. All you have to do is look on my desk and in my closet.
Meantime, you have this incredible, new marketing tool called AI. There are so many tools out to program Rufuses in many, many forms. Please make them great, since I’m a sucker for great pitches.
This week’s New Yorker comments on this:
This is a good segway into Harry’s Favorite Things.
+ My ThinkPad X1 Carbon laptop. I’m creating this blog — writing and images — on an X1 that I bought two and half years ago. I’d buy a newer one if it came with a faster CPU. But Windows CPU chips are made by Intel, a company which gives sleepiness a while new meaning.
+ Windows 10. It still works flawlessly. And Microsoft and Lenovo are updating it regularly. Picture a pig in doo-doo. That’s how happy I am with this allegedly obsolete combination.
+ Wilson tennis balls and Wilson tennis rackets. I hit a down-the-line backhand this morning so they must be good.
+ I love my new Subaru Suburban Wilderness. It has a heated steering wheel. Heaven in today’s cold weather.
+ I love my Fidelity online brokerage. They have enlightened AI. They’re called humans. They do a remarkably good job of answering my dumb questions (on the phone, no less) and walking me through my screen. They don’t have AI. They have intelligent humans. Their people are sweet and flattering. I like being flattered. The other big financial that has lots of human beings is JPMorgan, the bank, which, so far, has not unbanked me. I wonder if some my really dumb financial decisions — like shorting CoreWeave — might give Jamie Dimon cause to unbank me? If he does, can I sue him for $5 billion? Or $1 billion? Or anything that covers my CoreWeave losses.Free money has an appeal.
+ I love several magazines — The Economist, The Atlantic, and the New Yorker. And I like reading the New York Times. These publications spend time and money to research their stories. And while I don’t always agree with them, I read them to savor the quirky aspects of human life. For example, the New Yorker wrote this recently:
(Peter) Navarro’s role is that of mad-professor hype man: the President’s economics mascot. As Navarro, referring to Trump, has put it, “My function, really, as an economist is to try to provide the underlying analytics that confirm his intuition. And his intuition is always right.”
+ I like the books I’ve bought recently on Amazon Kindle. It’s like ice cream for the grandkids. Only I get my books delivered faster than they get their ice cream. I don’t know which is worse — calories or bad ideas. These days ice cream can actually cost more than a Kindle book That must mean that one of them is no longer affordable.
Some books I’m reading:
Next time I’ll go into more favorite gadgetry.
For now Jensen says he can not keep up with demand for his chips. That isn’t reflected in his share price. But it is in the stocks of memory makers and now the fiber makers (like Corning). At one stage, bitcoin was the preferred safe haven. Safe from the volatility in equities. But bitcoin has disappointed. And the hot money has moved into silver, gold, copper and uranium. The next move might be defense. Ask Perplexity.ai for all the defense ETFs — here and overseas. It’s an interesting list.
I wish the world moved a little slower and got a little warmer. — Harry Newton
