Project Fi invites won’t reach everyone until mid-summer, says Google

Invites for Google’s Project Fi carrier service began rolling out at the start of the month, but you’re not alone if you’re still waiting for yours to be processed. Google has revealed that some of those who registered will have to wait quite a while before being accepted into the program. Emails sent out suggest that some may have to wait until mid-summer before their request is processed.

In the email, Google explains that the delay is down to the large number of applications made to join the service, and that it is trying to get around to everyone as quickly as possible. To help ease customer concerns, Google says that it is also working on a way for users to track the status of their registration, which should appear within the next few weeks.

“We’re sending invites as quickly as we can, while ensuring a high-quality experience, … Given the number of requests we’ve received, we currently estimate that it will take until mid-summer to get to everyone.” – Google

In case you missed it, Project Fi is Google’s phone service that makes use of Sprint and T-Mobile LTE networks and Wi-Fi hotspots for its signal, but customers only pay for the data that they actually use. Consumers require a special SIM and are limited to use of the Google Nexus 6 smartphone for now, but other Android devices will be supported in the future.

Google is on the brink of AI capable of natural conversation and even flirtation – scientist

In Her, Joaquin Phoenix plays a man who falls in love with an AI

Artificial intelligence that can emulate human reasoning and even emotions is within Google’s reach, according to a leading AI scientist employed by the company.

Talking to the Guardian, Professor Geoff Hinton, an expert in artificial neural networks, said Google is “on the brink of developing algorithms with the capacity for logic, natural conversation and even flirtation.”

Google is working to encode thoughts as vectors described by a sequence of numbers. These “thought vectors” could endow AI systems with a human-like “common sense” within a decade, according to Hinton, who has been working at Google for two years.

Language and reasoning

Currently in early development, thought vectors may help AI master natural language conversation and make leaps of logic, two abilities that we perceive as distinctly human and that AI scientists have long sought to unlock.

Hinton said he even foresees AI that is so human-like that we will become attached to it, the way Joaquin Phoenix’s character in Her falls in love for his AI assistant.

Google has very practical applications for AI: currently, the company is using “thought vectors” to improve Google Translate, aiming to add a sense of meaning to the current dictionary-based translation algorithms.

The potential of AI is huge for Google; truly relevant search results, human-like translation, a genuinely helpful Google Now virtual assistant are just a few of the applications that only advanced AI can enable. Google has been acquiring top talent to further this goal, including through the $500 million acquisition of British startup DeepMind, considered the top player in deep learning algorithms.

PSA: Some users report that Google Now reminders don’t work

A batch of overcooked pasta is a small inconvenience, but when Google Now users rely on reminders to take their medication, pay bills, or get to the next appointment, bugs can become a cause of major headache.

According to several Reddit users, the reminder functionality of Google Now is currently broken. The app sets the reminder successfully, but the reminder popup doesn’t fire off at the set time as it should. As you can imagine, that can lead to all sorts of nuisances.

Reddit users Sloth_on_meth first reported the issue and screen capped it in this short video.

Several users in the thread have confirmed the issue; we were able to replicate the issue on a Nexus 5 with the latest version of the Google app, but not on other devices.

It’s not the first time we see issues with the reminder function not working. Before, however, trying to set a reminder returned an error message. Now the issue is more troublesome, because users are not alerted that the feature is disabled.

Google issues an apology for insulting Maps mess up

Google Maps has been experiencing a ton of issues lately. A couple of weeks ago, a “clever” Google Maps user submitted an image of the Android mascot peeing on an Apple logo, which forced Google to shut down editing in the Map Maker program to ensure it wouldn’t happen again. The Google Maps team apologized for the incident, and we all moved on. Then just a few days ago, users discovered that typing an offensive term into Maps would bring you straight to the White House. Obviously this isn’t okay, and Google knows it.

The company has just released a sincere apology for the most recent mishap, and explains that it’s taking great steps to ensure slip ups like this won’t happen again. Jen Fitzpatrick, Vice President of Engineering & Product Management at Google explains:

At Google, we work hard to bring people the information they are looking for, including information about the physical world through Google Maps. Our ranking systems are designed to return results that match a person’s query. For Maps, this means using content about businesses and other public places from across the web. But this week, we heard about a failure in our system—loud and clear. Certain offensive search terms were triggering unexpected maps results, typically because people had used the offensive term in online discussions of the place. This surfaced inappropriate results that users likely weren’t looking for.

Google says that it’s started to update its ranking system to address the majority of these errors, and that the fixes will roll out to users overtime.