Computer Vision

Why Camera isn’t just a camera

I woke up this morning thinking about the new Apple Studio Display’s webcam hiccup. It has reaffirmed my belief that the camera, and by extension, the visual sensor, is becoming a key interface to the information and how we interpret it. What keyboard and mouse were to what was textual computing, visual (and other sensors) will be a key to computing in the future.  

An article in the New Yorker laments that smartphone photography is too algorithmic. Similar laments were made when William Eggelston started experimenting with color film. Since then, our everyday memories have been captured on color film, each generation getting better than the others. It is the same for computational photography — we started with the grainy photos from Nokia, Blackberry, and the first iPhone. I remember the first iPhone and the photos that came off its puny sensor. We have already come so far in this journey.

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[Podcast] Eran Shir, Founder of DashCam Maker Nexar

A conversation with Eran Shir, Founder, and CEO of Nexar, to talk about his company’s connected dash cam, how it works to improve safe driving, and what a world full of cameras + intelligence means for our future. Eran explains why computer vision matters and why it also can go wrong pretty fast.

Disclosure: Nexar is part of the True Ventures portfolio of startups.

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Some thoughts on Amazon Go Retail

Amazon today launched its new retail store, which doesn’t have any people manning the shelves. An automat, from a company that is all about making shopping friction-free, is an obvious first step in reshaping the American retail experience. Back in 2010, when I said so, everyone thought I was out of my damn mind. That era has come and gone — today is about friction free shopping – an extension of their one-click shopping and Amazon Prime concepts. 

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The Hype & Hope of Artificial Intelligence

Much like “the cloud,” “big data,” and “machine learning” before it, the term “artificial intelligence” has been hijacked by marketers and advertising copywriters. What AI means, why we need it and where we are going with it — my arguments. This was a column originally published in The New Yorker in 2016.


Earlier this month, on his HBO show “Last Week Tonight,” John Oliver skewered media companies’ desperate search for clicks. Like many of his bits, it became a viral phenomenon, clocking in at nearly six million views on YouTube. At around the ten-minute mark, Oliver took his verbal bat to the knees of Tronc, the new name for Tribune Publishing Company, and its parody-worthy promotional video, in which a robotic spokeswoman describes the journalistic benefits of artificial intelligence, as a string section swells underneath.

Tronc is not the only company to enthusiastically embrace the term “artificial intelligence.” A.I. is

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