Confessions of a Tech Lover: My Unfiltered Thoughts on the Big Five and How They Shape Our Lives… Please don’t take it personally
As a first-person account of the Big Five oligopoly, I must say that @Google is definitely the one I trust the most, and I feel it’s also very responsible when it comes to artificial intelligence. Their products are the best too. I confess that I couldn’t live without #Gmail, #GoogleMaps, #GoogleCalendar, and #YouTube, and Chrome is undoubtedly the best browser on the market. Most of their products are “free,” and their platforms bring immense value to people’s lives. Many people make a living from #YouTube, and many businesses rely on #GoogleAnalytics.
Their hardware is also good and affordable, and their ecosystem works seamlessly. Furthermore, their search engine doesn’t seem to show biased search results.
Lastly, Google has changed the way the entire planet works! Their offices, aesthetics, and culture of simplification all strike me as very refined.
I don’t trust @Meta because I know they use data irresponsibly, manipulate elections, and destroy competition in underhanded ways (#Snapchat-IG). Zuckerberg DOES manipulate search results.
However, I appreciate their #Metaverse project and recognize their efforts in adopting virtual reality #VR and augmented reality #AR.
I also use #FacebookMarket, which is the only reason I still have that platform.
Apple is my tech heartbreaker. Mac remains a work of art, as do all of #SteveJobs’ products. But the brilliance died with him, and the apple has rotted, lining the pockets of stakeholders. Apple is now a company that enriches itself by indebting people. They are usurers, releasing devices designed to break when it’s convenient for them. They change ports and chargers to force users to buy extra parts at exorbitant prices and charge for their products’ warranties. Considering the pace of technology, one could say they haven’t innovated for years and fell into the mediocre trap of selling useless products because they understand marketing and abuse their users’ loyalty. In short, let’s not even talk about Apple. Let’s conclude it’s a toxic relationship.
#Microsoft has my respect because it’s the grandfather of all, a driving force in technology for over 40 years, creating some of the world’s most-used software products like Windows and Office. It’s directly responsible for the fact that Chat GPT and I are co-writing this article today.
Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.
But Microsoft lacks aesthetic sense and is generally an unlikable, socially awkward company, something like an inaccessible information fortress.
Have they ever considered that maybe Bill Gates is a Nostradamus because he has more information than we do?
Moreover, I believe the Office Suite should have been free a long time ago. Google offers the same with Google Drive and doesn’t charge a dime.
The Bing relaunch was a flop. Even though they tried to leverage the AI boom, they couldn’t give their search engine an edge.
Ethically speaking, Microsoft raises some concerns for me, and this is a personal opinion. Microsoft is behind OpenAI, and while I understand that all tech companies invest in similar projects and applaud their success, users deserve more information than just a black box of data.
Where do those data come from? What data was used to train the algorithm? Free strategies for the newly unemployed? Strategies or fair prices for each market? I don’t see social responsibility in how they approach artificial intelligence.
I’m not sure if I’m being unfair, but it’s unclear where #OpenAI ends and Microsoft begins.
I don’t know… I feel like #OpenAI has a tight grip on its code, with little empathy and social responsibility.
Amazon and I are shopping pals. I buy books and whatever else I can think of on Amazon , and it’s a fantastic service. Jeff Bezos has kept his word regarding customer satisfaction, and that’s admirable. He has also dared to explore and innovate in areas like self-driving cars and drones. Amazon has made the world as efficient as humanly possible to please its customers, but they undoubtedly took incentives too far.
When you have too much power, incentives can become more like bribes. If the reward (or consequence) outweighs an employee’s free will, we may no longer be in a free market scenario.
Amazon’s working conditions are disastrous, and their employees have reported being subjected to grueling work hours. There have also been complaints about safety policies due to a lack of personal protective equipment, inadequate training, and occupational accident risks.
And let’s not forget their sexist AI experiment, which openly displayed patriarchal bias.
In any case, Amazon is here to stay, and my intuition tells me there won’t be any significant market niche where Amazon doesn’t have an impact.
Amazon did for books and publishers what Spotify did for music: democratize the profession of writers, putting food on the table for many families worldwide.
And as a personal experience, I’ll say that being an immigrant, being able to buy things from your homeland with a click in a faraway place is an experience that goes straight to the heart.
