Are Robot Lawn Mowers FINALLY Worth It?

Electric lawnmowers are great. Quieter, more powerful, no toxic fumes or gasoline, and far less maintenance than a gas mower. However, there’s another way to level up your electric lawn mower game and that’s with the latest onslaught of robotic mowers hitting the market. Autonomous mowers that use proximity sensors, computer vision, and accurate to the centimeter global positioning systems are everywhere now. Last year I beta tested a model that’s out on the market now, and this year I bought myself a second one for comparison … and because I have a tech addiction problem … I even have a third, but it’s technically not a mower in its current configuration. It’s a yard robot with a snow blower attachment that I’m looking forward to testing out next winter. When I said that these things were everywhere now …. maybe I just meant at my house. But seriously, how well do they work and are they worth it?

AI Just Changed Everything … Again

Let’s stop pretending AI is new. I’ve been thinking a lot about generative AI lately. It’s kind of hard not to with the latest ChatGPT announcement. The technologies we’re witnessing are powerful, impressive, and developing fast. But let’s take a hard look at the structure behind it. The AI of the 2020s isn’t new. But its consequences are. If you’re watching this, they’ve already affected you. So how should we, the public, respond to tools that rely upon more data than we could ever fathom? How can they change our relationship to work? And…do we need to panic?