It’s the middle of the summer but there are still lots of tech news coming! This week Samsung and Oura launched new AI health services, and Apple announced they are enabling third-party NFC payments within the EU. This means you can change what a double-click on the power button should do on your iPhone. Also, the European Commission does not agree with X’s design of premium accounts using the blue badge, citing that they “deceive users and infringe the Digital Services Act”. As a result, X now risk fines up to several hundred million dollars. I expect cases like this to grow in the coming years, and as we have seen from companies like Apple we can expect slower product rollouts in the EU, trailing behind the rest of the world. There are very few companies who can risk paying 6% of their yearly global turnover by “just releasing” new features in the EU, but X is one of those companies, and it will be interesting to see how this turns out in court.
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This week’s news:
- All New Cars in the EU now Equipped With Mandatory Nagging Speed Meters
- Apple to Enable Third Party NFC Payments in the EU
- European Commission Charges X With Breach of Digital Services Act
- OpenAI Presents Roadmap to AGI
- Microsoft and Apple Gives Up Their Board Seats in Open AI
- Samsung Launches Galaxy Ring with AI Health Monitoring, Better than Oura Gen3?
- Oura Ring Launches AI Coach
All New Cars in the EU Now Equipped With Mandatory Nagging Speed Meters
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/new-cars-fitted-automatic-speed-limiters-this-week/
The News:
- In 2022 the European Commission (EC) decided that all new cars sold from July 7, 2024 must be equipped with Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA). The technology allows the car to automatically restrict its speed based on GPS location, speed-sign recognition and cameras within the vehicle.
- Drivers cannot shut off the system permanently, it has to be manually disabled every time you start the car.
- Disabling ISA can be very difficult. For example, in a Toyota the driver needs to perform 12 different steps to disable ISA every time the car is started!
- In many car models, it’s enough driving just 1 kilometer above what the car believes to be the right maximum speed to initiate multiple loud audio signals, warning the driver.
- In a Swedish test driving 5 new cars over a road segment of 28 km, they got 15 false audio alarms on that short trip.
My take: When EU decided on the date July 7 2024 two years ago they probably thought technology would have advanced far enough for this kind of system to work reliably and securely. But as tests have shown many current systems are inconsistent, erroneous and annoying in a very difficult to accept market combination. Short-term I expect European cars produced before July 7 2024 to increase in price, especially on the second-hand market. Being able to easily disable ISA will be my own top priority when picking a new car, and that functionality will be miles ahead of any other feature available.
Read more:
- Intelligent speed assistance (ISA) set to become mandatory across Europe | European Road Safety Charter
- KOMMISSIONENS DELEGERADE FÖRORDNING (EU) 2021/1958 – Swedish PDF
- Svårbegripliga tilläggstavlor en säkerhetsrisk | Vi Bilägare
Apple to Enable Third Party NFC Payments in the EU
The News:
- European Commission Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager has announced that Apple has committed to allowing third-party payment apps use the same NFC features as Apple Pay in Europe.
- This is the end result of an investigation launched by the body back in 2020, and, according to the release, has been the result of a back and forth between the EC, Apple, and interested third parties. The decision also has implications under the Digital Markets Act; the EC describes the solution as “more than what is required by the DMA”.
- There are three major implications to this change: (1), a secure payment method called “host card emulation mode.” This doesn’t seem to use the iPhone’s Secure Enclave, but the EC has accepted it as an equivalent solution. (2), the ability launch any payment app with a double-click of the iPhone’s side button, which currently launches the Wallet app. And (3), the ability to set a default payment option.
- The changes will kick in as of July 25th and are to remain in place for ten years, which will be monitored by a trustee along with a mechanism for resolving disputes and independent review.
My take: Today Apple Pay charges 0.15% of the purchase price to the companies that issue credit cards. So there are both a financial and strategic incitament for companies to bypass Apple Pay and provide direct access to their own credit cards. It will be interesting to see how this turns out, and how credit card companies will encourage users to switch from Apple Pay to their alternative solution.
European Commission Charges X With Breach of Digital Services Act
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_24_3761
The News:
- The European Commission has issued preliminary findings of non-compliance on three grievances:
- First, X designs and operates its interface for the “verified accounts” with the “Blue checkmark” in a way that “does not correspond to industry practice and deceives users”.
- Second, “X does not comply with the required transparency on advertising”, as it does not provide a searchable and reliable advertisement repository.
- Third, “X fails to provide access to its public data to researchers” in line with the conditions set out in the DSA.
What you might have missed: The blue checkmark that the EC feels “deceive users” is an indicator of X Premium, which is not the same as verified accounts. X clearly states this on their homepage: “Previously, the blue checkmark indicated active, notable, and authentic accounts of public interest that were independently verified based on certain requirements. Now the blue checkmark means the account has an active subscription to X Premium. Accounts that receive the blue checkmark as part of a X Premium subscription will not undergo review to confirm that they meet the active, notable and authentic criteria that was used in the previous process.”
My take: I can understand the second and third point, but the first one seems wrong to me. To be clear: EC is threatening X with fines of 6% of their total worldwide annual turnover due to a design choice. X have been very clear that the blue checkmark does not indicate a verified account but is now used as a badge showing that you are a “Premium user”. This design choice now means they risk fines up to $300 million dollars (their global turnover in 2021 was $5 billion). Elon Musk can easily afford this and has promised a “legal battle”, but if the EC wins it will have severe implications on how companies choose to grow and develop their software products on the European market. Every future design change will have to be approved before launching in Europe, and that might take a long time.
Read more:
OpenAI Presents Roadmap to AGI
The News:
- During an internal all-hands meeting on Tuesday, July 2, OpenAI shared their new classification system of five levels to track its progress toward building artificial intelligence software capable of outperforming humans.
- OpenAI executives told employees that the company believes it is currently on the first level, according to the spokesperson, but on the cusp of reaching the second, which it calls “Reasoners”. This refers to systems that can do basic problem-solving tasks as well as a human with a doctorate-level education who doesn’t have access to any tools.
- According to the levels OpenAI has come up with, the third tier on the way to AGI would be called “Agents,” referring to AI systems that can spend several days taking actions on a user’s behalf. Level 4 describes AI that can come up with new innovations.
My take: Today, the main issue most people seem have with products like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Llama is that they have poor reasoning. They write code but cannot understand it. They draw images but cannot see what they created. I do not think we will reach there in Level 2, but I do think that the quality of programming code generated by most popular LLMs will be good enough for all programming within 2 years. I don’t really agree with the steps outlined in the chart above, I think the next critical step for LLMs is for them to view their own output and continuously iterate in the right places to reach the expected result. Maybe that is “Level 2.5” according to OpenAI.
Microsoft and Apple Gives Up Their Board Seats in Open AI
The News:
- Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion in OpenAI, will withdraw from its observer role on the board. Apple was due to take up a similar role, but an OpenAI spokesperson said the startup won’t have board observers after Microsoft’s departure.
- Regulators in the US and Europe had expressed concerns about Microsoft’s sway over OpenAI, applying pressure to show that Microsoft is keeping the relationship “at arm’s length”.
- As can be seen in the image above, the biggest US tech companies including Microsoft as well as Nvidia, Alphabet Inc. and Amazon.com have poured tens of billions of dollars into AI businesses. While these investments and partnerships are a lifeline for the startups, regulators have expressed concern that they threaten to concentrate access to the most innovative large language models among the tech companies that already dominate other platforms.
My take: I don’t think Apple or Microsoft had any choice but to pass the seats as observers in the OpenAI board. The question is if it is enough. Both the FCC and EC have their eyes on the big tech companies and their investments in AI, and they will do everything they can to prevent a situation where a few major players control the most important platforms, outcompeting everyone else.
Samsung Launches Galaxy Ring with AI Health Monitoring, Better than Oura Gen3?
The News:
- Samsung just launched Galaxy Ring, Galaxy Watch7 and Galaxy Watch Ultra with “new, intelligent health experiences”
- The Galaxy Ring weighs between 2.3 to 3.0 grams, depending on size, which is less compared to Oura Gen3 which weighs between 4 to 6 grams.
- Price of the Galaxy Ring (with Titanium) is $399 with no subscription fee, compared to $499 to the Oura Gen3 Horizon Titanum. The Oura ring also requires a monthly subscription of $5.99 per month to view collected data.
- Galaxy Ring measures heart rate, sleep activity, heart rate variability and has a “powerful sleep AI algorithm to help you easily understand your sleep patterns and build better habits. “
My take: In an interview with the CEO of key competitor company Oura, their CEO said that Samsung device users only make up 5% of their user base. So it remains to be seen if there truly is a market for smart rings only targeting Android users (or in this case, Samsung users specifically). Smart Rings are a luxury for those who don’t want to sleep with their smart watches but still want to collect sleep data, and traditionally that target demographics group have been more dominated by iPhone users. Still, if Samsung chooses to open up the Galaxy Ring for iPhone users then Oura would be in for quite the challenge.
Oura Ring Launches AI Coach
https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/ouras-new-ai-coach-wants-to-chat-about-your-health-data
The News:
- The day before Samsung held its Unpacked event in Paris, Oura introduced its new AI coach. The AI health coach is called “Oura Advisor” and it’s launching as part of the company’s experimental Oura Labs program, which lets members try out new features early.
- Oura says you’ll be able to chat with Oura’s coach to ask questions and get personalized recommendations based on your existing habits.
- The feature will be opt-in, and you’ll be able to choose whether the assistant takes a supportive, mentoring or goal-oriented tone when delivering information.
My take: I have had several Oura rings, and the main issue I have with all the rings are that they are pretty “dumb”. They don’t know what you are doing, how far you are walking, and they are really bad at measuring heartrate and heart rate variability when you are awake and moving. I have tried different fingers, even the index finger like recommended, but data capture during the day is bad using a smart ring. Oura could have improved their algorithms significantly by also reading and using Apple Health data collected by an Apple Watch during the day. Together a ring + watch would make an extremely good pair for data collection, and this is also the approach Samsung used for their Galaxy Ring + Galaxy Watch AI enabled features. But Oura seems they won’t go this path, so until they do I remain quite sceptical about the value of an AI coach like the “Oura Advisor”. In my experience you cannot base an entire AI coach just from your sleep data.