Once crowdsourced for pennies on platforms like Amazon Mechanical Turk, labeling data for AI is swiftly becoming a hugely lucrative market — with much of the work done in places with cheap labor like China, India and Malaysia.
Why it matters: It's a necessary step for algorithms that learn from enormous troves of examples. A system that's seen a million cat photos, hand labeled as such, will be able to identify the million-and-first.
You could see in Apple's big hullabaloo today a glimpse of the great bundles of the future, built around phones instead of televisions.
Take a look at the startling breadth of the emerging Apple suite of subscription offerings:
What you read: Apple News+ ($9.99/month)
What you watch: Apple TV+ (A new TV app that also features a variety of skinny bundle options at $9.99 each, as well as original programming from talent like Steven Spielberg, Reese Witherspoon, Alfre Woodard and Kumail Nanjiani.)
What you listen to: Apple Music ($9.99/month)
What you play: Apple Arcade (price TBD)
How you pay: Apple Card, a new credit card that uses Apple Pay
Apple unveiled a slew of media-focused products and services from its Cupertino, Calif. headquarters.
The big picture: The company is going all-in on its services, introducing new media apps and services like Apple News+ and Apple Arcade, and bolstering others like its payment options with a credit card.
Not only is Lyft not profitable now and losing $911 million a year, the company has said it's not sure how it ever will be profitable. But investors don't care.
Driving the news: Lyft is expected to price on Thursday and go public Friday, with estimates for the company's market cap having risen to $25 billion. That's $10 billion higher than its most recent private valuation of $15.1 billion, which was double its value as recently as April 2017 of $7.5 billion.
Sunday saw lots of Twitter praise for liberals who were skeptical about what the Mueller report might eventually mean for President Trump.
What they're saying: National Review's Rich Lowry tweeted "Hats off " to The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald and The Nation's Katrina vandenHeuvel "for consistently pushing back on the insanity on their own side on Russia collusion for the last 2 years."
For your Tuesday radar: The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York will hear a case against Trump for blocking critics on Twitter.
Why it matters: In January, the Virginia-based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that government officials can't block constituents on social media accounts that they use for official business, based on its interpretation of the First Amendment. If the 2nd Circuit interprets the law differently, it's likely that the issue could find its way to the Supreme Court.
For a streaming serviceto be announced tomorrow, Apple spent two years securing deals with showbiz royalty — Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon, the L.A. Times' Ryan Faughnder and Wendy Lee write on the front page.
What's new: Apple's plans to create a lineup of programming to compete with Netflix, Amazon and Disney "have been cloaked in characteristic secrecy."
