- Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Double Tap on YouTube. I'm Steven Scott, and he's Shaun Preece. Hello, Shaun Preece. - Hello Steven Scott, how are you doing? - I'm all right, I don't wanna shout at the beginning. It's 'cause that music's on, I have to shout over the top of that music. - But, and we're far apart. - Can you hear me? - I'm in Manchester, you're in Glasgow. It's a long way. That's right. We're, even though the internet cables have joined us, although in your case, I'm not entirely sure what is going on with your wifi. - No, nor me. - Your wifi's terrible. You just always have these issues with your internet when I'm with you. - Okay, don't have a go at me, I'm here, at last. It's just, rejoice that I'm actually here. - It's partly because of the fact that that shed that you're in, and yes, yes viewers, he is in a shed, - Yes. - is connected to the house via a cable that's currently being munched by a fox. - Well, yes, it has to, but I fixed it with some parcel tape, so it should be absolutely fine, - Excellent, okay, well, in that case, - trust me. - it's brilliant. Perfect. You know, this kinda leads us into a rather interesting topic, this, because, you know, I've titled this video Technology Fatigue, which some might think is a little bit odd for a new YouTube channel to dive straight in talking about technology and diving straight into the subject of technology fatigue. But I think I've been hearing this more and more online, I've been reading a lot of articles from people who are just a bit fed up with where things are with tech. Some people think it's staying static for too long. Some people think that the AI bubble has maybe burst a little bit and it doesn't feel like it's living up to expectations. - Already? Wow. - Yeah, because look, I wanna pick up on this because I think the AI, we'll start with AI, I think that a lot of us see the potential for AI, but that's the problem, we all see potential, but what it's actually offering us at the moment is maybe not living up to that potential. So I think about ChatGPT, for example, and I think about, you know, how good it is, but then the hallucinations, the things it gets wrong, the lack of ability for it to do some basic tasks. I mean, if I search online, as I was doing the other day, I was trying to find a company representative to speak to on the show about something, and, you know, I thought, "I'll just ask GPT, can you find me the details?" And it's like, nope, can't do that, can't give out email addresses, can't do this, can't do that. Well, and I can just go to Google and do it. You know, so what's the point in this? So I feel that in some ways it's kind of, we've moved forward a great deal, but all I'm getting is more eloquent denials of answers for my information. - Ooh, eloquent denials. Someone's gotten posh, that sounds very good. - Yeah, let's rename the episode, rename it immediately. I like that. Eloquent denial. - Well, I gotta say, yeah, I think you're right. I think the key thing here is the word potential. It's what we constantly say, hey, the potential for this, self-driving cars, the potential for this, and AI is something that, is that on the developers, the providers of AI or is that on us? Are we jumping the gun? Because AI, since ChatGPT, it's all we talk about. It's been hammered and nailed into every service out there. I mean, you know, there's gonna be a Copilot button on your keyboard in the future, there's gonna be Copilot in every single service, and it goes to everything. It's almost like when we had smart devices, suddenly we got smart toothbrushes, smart bidets, everything is smart. Now everything is AI. And can it possibly live up to that expectation that we've got for it of just solving everything? Yeah, I'm not convinced. - Well, I think that's a separate point because I think there is a question mark over what is AI. I think that the problem is everyone is sticking that badge on their product, but not everything is AI. You know, there's a lot of stuff out there that I think gets called that, but it's really just a catchall phrase, it's becoming a catchall phrase, and you're absolutely right, you know, that word smart was bandied about, and I think what's happening is they're using AI in the same way. So actually when they say AI, they just mean smart, so maybe for example, you know, you could say, oh, an AI light switch because you could, you know, control it with shortcuts so you could set up a routine using your Amazon Echo that would allow you to have the light go on and off at night. It's not really AI. That's just smart. - No, it's not. - So, you know, I think there's levels to this. But what I'm talking about is, is the technology itself achieving what we kind of dreamed it would achieve? Now of course, it's very good at spitting out information and you know, it still blows me away sometimes when I use it and I think, "Wow," you know, how it's able to take a transcript of what we talk about, I mean, what we talk about. - I know. And make some kind of sense out of it, it just blows me away 'cause I can barely make any sense out of it, and I apparently have a functioning brain, although that is yet to be agreed upon by some experts. But I do think that there's a serious question here about where we're at with this. And, you know, it doesn't feel to me as if we're kinda moving on. I mean, I know the image recognition is kinda the big focus for a lot of people at the moment. That is impressive, and certainly, that is very useful at the moment, and for us blind people, it's extremely useful to have images in front of us. You know, today, I was using these Meta Ray-Ban glasses I've got, and I snapped a picture, just of the desk in front of me, and it told me that on the desk were some SD cards, three SD cards to be precise, and a watch, and I thought, "A watch," and then I felt around and found the watch it was talking about, and I thought, I said, "I wonder where that had gone." But you know, the fact is it was able to determine what things were, it was even able to pick up on things like, I had a Stream Deck on my desk, I had a RODECaster Pro device to, a mixer to record, it picked up on those things, like specific devices. And I thought, "That's kind of clever, right? "That is kinda clever," and how it's able to do that, and that's where I see potential. But again, I wonder if it's maybe that, and this is my question today, is it that we are at that point where we've just kind of exhausted ourselves talking about it and we should actually be focusing on what amazing technology this is? Or is it because we're always looking for the next thing? Are we looking for the next thing, like for example, video to be transcribed or made available live to us so that we can walk down the street and it can tell us, oh, there's a pole in front of you, that's, is it, we're just so used to the cycle of newness that we're kind of forgetting what we've got? - Newness. Well, yeah, I mean, what technology do we actually use, do we find useful right now? Are we, like you say, we're never quite happy, you know, we always want more. And there's nothing wrong with that, but fatigue is an interesting word to use. Fatigue, are we actually getting to the point where I'm sick of hearing about it, I just want the practical usability, functionality of this technology? I don't wanna know, in two years it's gonna be absolutely amazing. What can it do for me right now? And I think you're right, with the hallucinations with AI, that does cause a problem. In our case, as visually impaired people, what do we want from AI? You gave an example there of Be My AI and the amazing things it can do and it's made a huge difference and it's fantastic, absolutely, but how does that help me get around? How does that help me find the door to that building which is, you know, just in front of me, but it might as well be a million miles away 'cause I can't find where that door is to get in the place? Does it help with that? Not currently, not to a great deal. So, the-- - Well not without being very slow and, you know, I think it's very good at telling you there is a door, but it's not, and it might even tell you roughly where it is, but it can't guide you to it, you know, and it's kind of, it feels as if we've got all these elements together, so you've got like LiDAR in the iPhone, you know, you have all-- - Yep, door detection. - Door detection in it, and yes, there are elements that kind of allow you to see what's in front of you, but the actual navigational part is not quite there. Is it because we are kind of expecting, are we expecting too much from this or do we feel that it just never takes us the last 10 yards, which ironically is a blind person's biggest problem, the last 10 yards in our lives. I feel technology has perhaps got a bit of a last 10 yards problem. - Well, I mean, it sort of takes us back to the start of the conversation when you say that, is it our expectations that need sort of dampening down a little bit or is it down to the marketing and the PR speak of the actual companies themselves, promising but not quite delivering on those promises? I honestly don't know. I think we do get carried away a little bit ourselves. I mean, I could take the Vision Pro for example, this has nothing to do with AI, so slightly off topic, sorry, but we could take the Vision Pro, I was so excited when the Vision Pro was announced at the Apple event, so excited. But then, you know, when you look into the actual practicalities of it, how could I use that, how could I make use of that and how could it help me every day, you start to think, "Actually I'm not sure. "I'm so impressed by the technology, "but how is it in practical terms?" - Well, save your thoughts on that because we are gonna come back to the Vision Pro in the next episode, I wanna pick up on that. But I wanna ask you about GPS because GPS has been a problem for me for many years, trying to find a good way to navigate around. There's lots of apps, I find, lots of things I wanna do, like just catching the bus, and knowing, for example, when the bus is coming, that it's actually the bus I want. I don't have time to take a picture and get analysis from Be My AI on that. It's not gonna be enough time. The bus will be long gone by then, by the time I get that information back. Even if it was within 20 seconds, that's still too long, right? - Yeah, yeah. - So, you know, that aspect, I feel like there's that one example of where it's not going far enough, but GPS, you know, I can find my way to the Starbucks, but as I once had the experience, you know, GPS took me to Starbucks, it said, "You've arrived," and I could not find the way in. And I was completely confused because I was against a very solid brick wall. And I'm thinking, "Where is the door in this?" There didn't seem to be any windows on this building. What is going on? And someone passed by and asked why I was, you know, feeling up the local wall, and I said, "Well look, I'm looking for a Starbucks, "which apparently around here," and said, "Oh, it's across the road." And I'm like, geez, - Of course. - of course, right, it's just across the road, and that's the problem. This is the problem for me. I think that our fatigue perhaps comes from the fact that the technology just never seems to get us to where we wanna be. It gets us very close. We see all the potential, we see all the goodness, we're so excited about it, but then we're exhausted by it because when we get into the real world, it's not as practical as we'd like. It's not as useful for us as we'd like. Now that can be said for many people, but I'm only talking about blind people, so, you know, there you go. - Yeah, I'm only talking to blind people. You're absolutely right, and that's where the-- - I'm blind, so who else would we talk about, right? - Exactly. That phrase, the last 10 yards, is exactly where that comes from. I mean, you know, GPS can say, oh, it's five meters GPS drift, so I'm accurate to five meters. Fantastic, but that five meters might as well be 5 million miles away if you can't see, because it just disappears. Five meters, I don't know where that is. So GPS gets you in the general location and then, you know, the last 10 yards is actually finding an entrance to a place, or is it actually across the road, GPS sounds absolutely amazing, and again, as soon as I got my first smartphone, GPS app on there, and I was thinking, "This is amazing." Back in the day, it was just for cars, but now this is for me. And you soon realize, - That's right, yeah. - actually, you know, I'm walking down the road, I've got an hour for lunch, I'm walking down the road trying to find the sandwich shop and, okay, speak to me. Tell me where I am, am I going the right way? The technology sounds amazing, but in practical terms, does it actually do what you want it to do? It's a very interesting question. That's, coming from you Steven Scott, you know, the king of tech, I'm quite surprised you bring up fatigue, but I totally understand where you're coming from. - Yeah, and don't even get me started on once you get into the Starbucks, trying to find the cashier, find a table, know what's in the menu. I mean, you know, every single day out is like an adventure, and you know, pre-planning is the only way to survive as a blind person, really, it is. You know, you've gotta be so ahead of the game, or you just get so used to ordering the same thing. You know, you go into a place, - Well-- - you get used to ordering a thing. - You do, always order a burger. You can eat it with your hands and it's nice and quick, yeah, the-- - For me, it's, in Starbucks it's a, or whatever else it might be, you know, it's usually a Bakewell tart. You usually have one of those, or a chocolate muffin, those are the kinda safe bets, you know? - But look, we got the technology there, right, in the form of a service like Aira or Be My Eyes, which connects you via video call to a actual human. - If you get signal. This is what I mean. - If you get, yeah, there's another, yeah, but-- - Exactly, right? That's another example of it, right? The fatigue that sets in, what if you can't get signal? I'm in Amsterdam Airport, I'm trying to navigate around, I thought I'll be independent, I'll use Aira to get myself to the exit to get to a taxi, to get an Uber, and I couldn't get signal. I kept losing connection, and then I ended up getting literally grabbed and pulled down a set of stairs I wasn't even intending to go down. - Well you're going anyway. Yeah. - Yeah. - But I mean, it's a good reminder to us all, I suppose, 'cause we do get swept away with the tech, and swept down stairs in your case, but we do get swept away with the tech and how cool and great it is and what a benefit it is every day. It enables me to do the job that I'm doing now, right, and you as well. - Yeah, exactly. - So it's absolutely fantastic, but you can't get away from, you need those skills when it comes to mobility anyway. You know, grab that white stick or whatever. You cannot fully 100% rely on technology. - You know, something we'll talk about in the future, and we will get into this, is my other fatigue, which is companies that design products for us that we don't want, and nobody asked for. I'm sick about hearing of smart canes and robot guide dogs. I'm just sick of it. So I don't wanna hear about it, I'm sorry. I've got a white cane that works fine. I don't need it replaced. Why are we constantly trying to replace? We'll get into that another time. We're out here for today though. Catch us next time, we're gonna talk about Vision Pro. My question is, and you might sense a theme this week, my question up next is, what's the point of Vision Pro? - Wow. Like, subscribe, and comment. Catch you next time. - Thank you.