Google “ how many days until Christmas ” on a electronic computer , and you ’ll find a little animate present tense that transports you to the company’sSanta Tracker hub , a winter wonderland full of activities and educational content for tyke . Among the offering is a guessing game called Quick Draw , which reach an denotative and unsettling promise to take “ Tensor ” on kid ’ drawing . According to the company , however , it ’s just a nervy Christmas joke and the purport is n’t really to perfect its algorithms on children ’s data .
Quick Drawgives you an object to draw like candy , a nuthatch , or a sleigh . As you outline , a little animated golem name “ Tensor ” tries to guess what you ’re draw . TensorFlowhappens to be the name of a software system subroutine library for political machine learning and AI that was develop by the Google Brain team . So it could be easy to adopt the cunning little robot help Santa is a front for an AI giant lurking behind the pall .
The game opens with an explanation encouraging you to “ Help Tensor do its image recognition ! ” The description say Tensor is “ Santa ’s Machine Learning robot . ” accord to the game , “ The more you draw , the smarter Tensor will get , ” which will “ help Santa be more effective than ever this holiday season . ”
Screenshot: Google
In an email , a Google voice said you should n’t take that literally . “ We ’re drear for the confusedness , ” the spokesperson said . “ Drawings create by histrion of the secret plan are n’t used to train AI models . We ’ll update the site description to elucidate that . ” The representative clear up that Quick Draw ’s Tensor has no sexual congress to Google ’s real AI product that utilise the same name , which include a serial publication of “ AI - first ” processor for its Pixel smartphones and TensorFlow , an overt - source program library for machine learning package .
According to Google ’s press department , Quick Draw debut around 2017 , long before questions about unreal intelligence reached the current existential feverishness rake of the post - ChatGPT world .
There ’s good reason to be unbelieving of giving tech , but it make sense that Quick Draw is n’t just a ploy to put kids to figure out in Google ’s AI workshop . Google is particularly apprehensive about defective press , even compared to its often admonish big technical school rivals . Most of the company ’s project go through a series of sound and public relations checks to see to it Google is n’t step into the mud ; if Quick Draw was really harvest home Kyd ’ information , it ’s hard to imagine Google would be so upfront and pollyannaish about it . There are less risky ( and relatively inexpensive ) ways for the company to train up its AI United States Army , especially when the general public is hyper - sensitive to kids ’ privacy issues .
Google’s says this game doesn’t actually do what it says that it does.Screenshot: Google
Whether or not Quick Draw is turn kids into Santa ’s AI helpers , it is help to relieve them into a future that many detect unsettling , one where the world is make full with robots build up by corporations like Google at every turn .
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