Disconnected

Mark Zuckerberg is engaged in battles on many fronts these days… While he prepares for a much anticipated cage match with Elon Musk, it’s Meta’s sizable losses that are prompting a rethink of the VR space - especially since Apple’s major steps last month. Grappling with this and more on Disconnected, Jason, Jen and Jag bring us the latest on YouTube’s misinformation policy, AI already taking jobs,...

A chatbot is for life, not just for 2023. Everyone seems to want a piece of the AI chatbot pie, even the likes of IKEA and Instagram, prompting the key question: why? Answering that question this week on Disconnected, we have a magnificent return from the lovely Felina Tan, alongside the usual suspects of Jen & Jason!  We touch on homes getting too smart, changes to YouTube’s Partner Programme...

When AI grows smarter than the human race, could we stop it wiping us out? There’s plenty of good in artificial intelligence tools, like Adobe’s generative fill revolutionising photo editing, but where the AI train stops, nobody knows… Jen, Jag and Jason mull over our very existence in a dramatic episode of Disconnected, along with a warning for Android users and Elon’s latest battles. This episod...

Your new girlfriend could cost you a dollar per minute. AI chatbots are nothing new now, but a clone of influencer Caryn Marjorie is paving the way for a future where you can converse with anyone, anytime - but is that more of a thrill or a threat to society? Elsewhere in this week’s Disconnected, face-altering filters are put under the microscope, TfL using TikTok to crack down on fare-dodging, a...

Do you own the copyright to your own likeness? We’re in the wild west of ‘deepfakes’; enabled by AI, and now being monetised by Tencent.  Beyond this trust-wavering news, we’re seeing a Twitter competitor from Twitter’s own former CEO, and a pivot towards long form content from the very platforms that demanded shorter content in the first place… Jen Campbell, Jason Kapadia & Jag Sharma take us...

Your voice is no longer uniquely your own. With AI at the centre of two controversies this past fortnight - voice clones and fake photography - it’s clear that we’re seeing new uses for technology at a rate beyond which we can hope to keep up. Meanwhile in the tech world, social media trends have transformed the approach to drinking water, and Twitter’s ‘freedom of speech, not freedom of reach’ is...

Amazon claims to be able to cover 90% of the US with its Echo and Ring devices - is this a connected utopia or a data privacy hell? With Amazon Sidewalk on the way and the recent merger with iRobot, we’re one step closer to every house’s inner workings being detailed by our ‘Amazon overlords’, as Jag Sharma might call them… On Disconnected, Jag considers how Jeff Bezos’ titan company is continuing...

TikTok troubles, Trump’s return and banks going bust - three huge stories with tech at the heart of it all… Social media can be the catalyst for so many challenges, and simultaneously become the solution to them too, and the past fortnight’s events have proven that in spades. Coming together to break down the platforms at the core of the world’s biggest stories on Disconnected this week are the ev...

Could software get to know you well enough to become your surrogate social communicator? Between Snapchat Plus and Slack, we’re seeing yet another fascinating AI implementation between episodes of Disconnected, bringing the prospect of a digital personal assistant ever-closer. Join Jag Sharma, Jen Campbell and Jason Kapadia for a deep dive into these GPT tools, the TikTok-ification of Reddit, and...

It was only a matter of time before chatbots found Tinder… While ChatGPT is landing people dates, Bing’s AI chatbot is picking existential fights with its users, and Elon Musk (of all people) is the voice of reason calling for regulation. It’s been a frenetic fortnight in technology, so Charis Marr and Jason Kapadia join Jag Sharma to cover it all, including Meta’s move to create a paid verificati...

Let the race for AI supremacy begin… Since OpenAI’s ChatGPT became an instant hit, reaching over one million users faster than any social media site, Google and Microsoft have emerged as the next big players in the AI game. So why would they start an AI chat war, what have they to gain from it all, and where does that leave us? We’re breaking down the dangers, the opportunities and the new-norms o...

If your job involves technology, then AI is coming to replace it… Whether it’s photography, video editing, cold outreach or interior design, there’s a new tool that promises to democratise the ability to create, and the chances are that artificial intelligence is behind it. Join us on Disconnected this week as we take a look at the new age of tools taking over… This episode of Disconnected covers:...

Is AI forcing education to evolve faster than ever before? The applications of GPT-3 have grown from a basic language model into the foundation for some incredible tools, some of which make cheating at school easier than ever. This week on Disconnected, we hear from Jag, Jason and Felina as they break down AI plagiarism, whether your follower count grants unique social privileges, and Brewdog’s di...

The only certainty in the tech world is uncertainty, and that much is true of next year. Whether the 54% of young Americans wanting to become influencers drive the growth in social commerce, or rapid development of AI tools creates unthinkable shortcuts to content creation, 2023 promises to be game-changing all around. Jen Campbell and Charis Marr return to the Disconnected podcast alongside Jason...

2022 has been a mighty long year in the tech space… Whether it’s the cries to make Instagram Instagram again or the introduction of GPT3 through tools like DALL-E, it’s worth looking into our past to consider what the future holds. Felina Tan & Jason Kapadia peer into their crystal ball on Disconnected this week, picking out the past year’s landmark moments and guiding us through their predict...

Twitter is experiencing an age of extreme turbulence with Elon Musk at the helm. Since his takeover his ‘vox populi, vox dei’, utopian vision for the platform has encountered its fair share of hurdles, from irate employees to imitators with a checkmark. So how does Elon steady the ship? Which are the huge problems to tackle first, and what could Twitter become in the right hands? Jason Kapadia and...

From digital banks to 24 hour grocery delivery, it’s clear that our everyday lives are being increasingly shaped by technology, but not every country is advancing equally… Having lived in Singapore, Honk Kong and London, Felina Tan is perfectly placed to lead us in a comparison of global tech, whether we’ll see the West adopt a more one-app-fits-all system, the lack of growth in digital banking in...

We've come so far from the days of Pac-Man and Pong, but has gaming lost its way? Video games bring us entertainment, escapism, challenge and social connection in equal measure, particularly as their scale and budget grows, but Jag Sharma and Jason Kapadia have some huge gripes with the industry. On this games-focused episode of Disconnected, we dive into the rich history of retro games, oppo...

Nothing is as it seems on the internet anymore - not even a simple cheese pizza. ‘Algospeak’ is a language growing in prevalence as a way to fight algorithmic censorship. The question that remains: can we keep up with it all? We dive into the implications of algorithm-dodging on this week’s podcast, as well as a look at Tesla’s robotic answer to Asimo and Boston Dynamics, the revitalised talks bet...

TikTok might understand your own identity before you do. There’s a lot of incredibly smart algorithms and an immense truckload of data behind each one of us on the platform. Should this be cause for concern from a platform that’s replacing search engines and news sites? We dive into the opportunities and concerns with the platform on Disconnected, as well as how the anti-vax conversation has been...

No original idea remains original for long in the tech world… The once novel idea of BeReal’s dual camera platform is being copied by Snap and Instagram, so with a new platform on the rise - Poparazzi - how long will it last before its imitators emerge? As we dive into the latest news in social media technology on this week’s episode of Disconnected, find out more on the rise of social media subsc...

Tech has irreversibly changed the childhood experience, for better or for worse. Where once the world’s answers were found in the Encyclopaedia Britannica on disks, they’re a tap away from us on the very phones that keep kids entertained, connected, and distracted. We’re taking a look at how far technology has come for those heading back to schools and universities, the doors it unlocks for the ne...

What happens when AI amplifies the most toxic traits of humanity? The racist, anti-semetic and inflammatory views being spewed from Meta’s new chatbot hold a huge mirror to the sources on which it was trained, and poses a question over the role a chatbot should play. We dive into this sensitive topic on Disconnected this week, along with the latest on possibly the world’s most valuable hard drive...

Travel technology is bringing the world closer together, but are we ready for it? While virtual influencers and autonomous taxis encourage us to embrace the world around us, we’re also hampered by the Instagram vs Reality disconnect and over-reliance on tech to solve our climate issues. We’re tackling all things travel on Disconnected this week, hosted in Jag’s absence by Jen Campbell, joined by B...

Gen Z are the first generation not to know a time pre-internet - that makes them the driving force behind our technological future. They’re often bundled in with Millennials when disparaging criticism is launched at younger generations, but there’s huge differences between the Millennial ‘digital natives’ and the tech-dependent Gen Z.  Discover what the next generation holds for us, from values-le...