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Comment by ipsum2 | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me when X-rays first were discovered, everyone claimed their product contained them, including X-ray headache tablets, golf balls, stove polish, razor blades. https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/full/10.1148/rg.242035157 for some fun pictures.

I won't be surprised when AI toothbrushes come out.

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The Ad for the "x-ray stove polish" lists "cannot explode" as a feature which makes me wonder about their competitions polish

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SJMN19060225.2.77&e=-------en--2...

Exploding Stove Polish was apparently a problem. Gotta wonder what chemical it was causing the problem.

> Stove Polish Explodes. [by the Associated Press ]

> LOS ANGELES, Feb. 24 Mrs. Sylvia Olds wife of George Olds, of Gardena was probably fatally burned by the explosion of a bottle of stove polish today.

The problem might be less with the chemicals in the polish per se and more with the mechanical processes surrounding its manufacture and use. Many otherwise safe substances become explosive when aerosolized.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_explosion

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/641

This still happens a lot with some more mundane things. I picked up a bag of sugar the other day that said "gluten-free sugar!"

It doesn't help when formal classifications such as "organic" muddy the waters:

"Of course it's organic, it comes from a plant!"

"That's not what organic means..."

"Guh, wat?"

It's generally a good idea to avoid more than trace amounts of inorganic foods. Just Sayin'...

Relevant Achewood: http://achewood.com/index.php?date=02112003

That's exactly why they say it

See also "Clean bathrooms!" billboards when road tripping.

Usually the goal...

Our toothpaste contains 0% raw sewage!

And the picture of devils (?) dancing on the stove? Who are they marketing to?

That's happened:

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/10/25/20932250/...

But what if I want to put my toothbrush in the blockchain as well?

Oh, the puns I can make... DentAI care?

In French: Intelligencive Artificielle? ÉmAI brillant? Recarie Neural Networks? MolAIre.

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/10/25/20932250/...

  if brush_time < 2.minutes
    return "Brush longer"
  else if brush_time > 5.minutes
    return "Brush less"
  end

I.e. using bleeding-edge decision-tree models to disrupt the oral hygiene space.

Lotta bleeding edges in the oral hygiene space

In the real world, most AI is just a bunch of IF statements, anyway, just abstracted away enough that it's no longer obvious.

Some of those do seem to be claiming to contain X-rays but others, like the golf balls, just seem to be using it as a brand name. I don't see the problem with that: we don't complain about the lack of snakes in Python. The "calling everything AI" problem seems to be exclusively claiming that your product actually uses AI.

If computing ability were to become as cheap and low-power as human/animal brains, you could have the full capacities of a present day dentist contained in the area of a present day powered tooth. Just make the bristles freely moving, add some hard pieces for plaque and you have a thing that could use that intelligence.

Which is to say, sure, today "AI" is just a marketing term but that's 'cause they don't have it, not because real intelligence isn't something that would be very useful in many, seemingly trivial places.

That already happend, in 2019. https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/10/25/20932250/...

I am pretty sure there is an AI toothbrush already...

(Haven't googled it yet, I swear!)

It's the new "nano-."

I promise you the AI toothbrushes ARE coming. Just wait...

Yeah, I once had an employer offer a dental plan from a company who sent us all wi-fi capable toothbrushes complete with a mobile app with the promise of discounts in our group rate in exchange for letting the things phone home.

World's top developers create awesome things out of curiosity and the best application MBAs find for any great innovation is Ads.

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