Kingsbury Associates

 Introduction Courtesy of our local email lists, we learned of a program actually hatched by our Montgomery County schools for an exchange program of high school students from France and Spain.    The above image is a chatGPT generated image so no real people here!   Anyway, below is a quick synopsis of the program from the organization website of the program.  The International Friendship Foundation, (TIFF) is an organization created by Montgomery County Maryland educators for families who wish to experience the cultural and educational benefits of hosting a student from France or Spain. This particular February trip were students from Corsica, the French island in the Mediterranean.  This was a week long program so we signed up for it.   The program director, Steven Hancock, is a prince of a man, who sent us a sheaf of papers including thick packets from each of the students that would be staying with us.  One of the students didn't like fish -...

The Sunday printed NYT yesterday had a fun point/counterpoint about AI Bots and human connections.  I describe both pieces below and then try to harmonize them.   1. The News Piece Gift Link for the News piece https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/us/elliq-ai-robot-senior-companion.html?unlocked_article_code=1.MlA.nJTy.aHEjzaAHns_e&smid=url-share First, the NYT front page "top of the fold" was a story by Eli Saslow about an 85 year old in a rural part of Washington State who was equipped with a home robot for companionship. Here's the story's lead: "At 85, Jan Worrell lived alone on a remote corner of the Washington coast. Could ElliQ become her companion?"  This is a long wonderful told story of a woman who is a rugged individualist forming a relationship of sorts with the ElliQ home robot programmed to provide fun companionship. With her family spread far and in a location with no neighbors close, Worrell's isolation was real, and as the story expl...

  Many thanks to Pennsylvania Neuro Surgeon Jonathan Slotkin for his Dec 2 NYT Op Ed about the Waymo data dump.  Gift link below.  His conclusion to treat this not through the lens of tech but instead through public health is a striking contribution.  The graphic above is the most probative in his article - possible because of the completeness of Waymo’s data dump.  Slotkins’s point is that the data included all the miles and routes taken by the Waymo vehicles allowing a head to head comparison with human drivers resulting in the chart.  He is critical of regulations only requiring self driving companies to report crashes, because as he says, "We need the denominator [all miles traveled and where], not just the numerator [of crashes]." In a tech user presentation not long ago by a local town manager that I know, he challenged our audience with "how much safer will it have to be?"  Well, Slotkin’s data analysis answers that convincingly!  I’ve shar...

 This was a most interesting NYT opinion piece dated Non 23, 2025, by David Gruber, a marine biologist.   Here is a gift link to the article:  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/opinion/whale-language-ai.html?unlocked_article_code=1.5k8.CIB8.4orrrrq5D8xU&smid=url-share This interested me partly because my daughter and son in law may be starting a family soon and during their Thanksgiving visit, I joked that in their child's life, we'd be able to understand and converse with whales and crows!  When soon after their departure, I read this opinion piece, it took on greater significance to me.  Because of the great work by scientists like Dr. Gruber, and their use of new AI tools, the time to understand whales might be much sooner than I'd thought!   As a tease, here's a paste from Dr. Gruber's article that got my attention:   Altogether, these findings are leading us to an extraordinary conclusion: Whales may possess a communication system more intric...

  When a friend read my blog about our EV journey, she commented that people were more interested in what's happening with AI.  She challenged me about my AI assessment, so time to blog about it.  I last wrote about nascent AI two years ago,  https://kingsburyassociates.blogspot.com/2023/01/newest-ai-entrants-observations.html  and much has changed since then.   A number of these Chat bots are in wide use today.  Here is a short list: ChatGPT (by OpenAI) Google Gemini (by Google DeepMind / Google) Grammarly AI (by Grammarly Inc.) / Productivity-AI Engines Microsoft Copilot (by Microsoft) DALL·E / Other Image-/Creative-AI Engines (by OpenAI) Claude (by Anthropic) Character.AI Google Assistant I want to start with my own recent experience with ChatGPT and then the insights gained from the June & July meetings of my local MUG - Mac User Group, Washington Apple Pi.  I'll include links there to the group's website.  ChatGPT & Web search AI...

I thought it might be helpful to tell our story of shopping for EVs, our decision, and how it's worked out so far.  Comments, please! Our Plug in Prius We'd long owned a plug in Hybrid Prius , where plugging in to our regular driveway outlet, we'd get 9-12 miles on the 2nd battery, and for those local errands pretend we were driving an EV !  I think this Prius was one of the early vehicles with regenerative breaking , where use of the brakes adds electricity to the small extra plug in battery.  The biggest challenge to the plug in hardware was a habit to leave the cable outside, which resulted in corroding and no longer working.  So over the 12 years we owned it, we went through 4 different charging cables!   A cool charging story with our plug in Prius happened when we drove to Ashville, SC.  Approaching on the Rocky Mountain Highway, the road has a very long decline into the valley where Ashville lay.   I mentioned the regenerative breaking.  We...