80 Good Instagram Captions and Quotes to Add to Pictures

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes words can help sell a picture. To help you do just that, here are some of the best Instagram captions and quotes we could find.

Using Instagram captions can help you hook your audience, provide context, and build your personal brand. So, try using some of these Instagram captions and quotes to spice up your feed.

Instagram Captions for Food

Restaurants aren’t the only places setting the mood. Let your food captions set the tone and atmosphere.

• I’m on a seafood diet. I see food and I eat it.
• Live. Love. Eat.
• Good food is good mood.
• There is no we in food.
• You can’t live a full life on an empty stomach.
• Love the taste, taste the love.
• Life is a combination of magic and pasta.
• People who love to eat are the best people.
• You’re one in a melon.
• Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.

Instagram Captions for Friendship

While it can be hard to put friendship into words, these Insta captions make it a little easier.

• Meet my partner in crime.
• A sweet friendship refreshes the soul.
• I don’t know what’s tighter, our jeans or our friendship
• Life is too short to be serious all the time. So, if you can’t laugh at yourself, call me—I’ll laugh at you.
• A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.
• Friendship isn’t a big thing. It’s a million little things.
• I don’t know what I did to deserve a best friend like you.
• Life is better with friends.
• Friends come and go. Best friends will always find their way back.
• A true friend is one soul in two bodies.

Instagram Captions for Couples

With your significant other, it can seem like no words capture the magic of your feelings. Still, these captions can help describe an ounce of that emotion.

• If I ever write a story about my life, don’t be surprised if your name appears billion times.
• Just the two of us.
• I want to be with you until my last page.
• You are my today. And all of my tomorrows.
• Sometimes relationships end so love stories can begin.
• My world, my heart, my everything.
• Every love story is beautiful, but ours is my favorite.
• I don’t care how hard being together is, nothing is worse than being apart.
• If someone cares about you, you won’t ever have to wonder how they feel, they’ll constantly remind you.
• I want you to be happy, but I want you to be happy with me.

Instagram Captions for Success

Whether you just nailed a job interview or your luck is going up, share your success. Celebrate your latest victory with these captions.

• Pursue your passion, and you’ll never work a day in your life.
• Successful people take the path towards the destination through great obstacles and difficulties.
• Don’t talk, just act. Don’t say, just show. Don’t promise, just prove.
• It always seems impossible until it’s done.
• Say yes to new adventures.
• Rejection is just redirection.
• If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you.
• Perseverance pays… a lot!
• If you have never failed, you have never lived.
• The best revenge is a massive success.

Instagram Captions for Travel

Travel photos and blogs are plentiful on Instagram. Make yours stand out with these easy captions.

• I travel so my life isn’t disrupted by routine.
• Be back never.
• People don’t take trips, trips take people.
• I travel because you can always get more money, but you can never get more time.
• I’ve got a bad case of wanderlust.
• Keep calm and travel on.
• We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.
• Be right back, exploring the world.
• Always take the scenic route.
• Catch flights, not feelings.

Instagram Captions for Selfies

Photos don’t say everything. Let your personality shine through with some of these unique captions.

• Proof that I can do selfies better than you.
• Duckface.
• Never let anyone treat you like you’re ordinary.
• Smile big, laugh often.
• Don’t hate.
• People will stare. Make it worth their while.
• I woke up like this.
• Eyes are never quiet.
• My time is now.
• I was born to stand out.

Instagram Captions That Inspire

What inspires you? Share your daily mantra with these Instagram captions.

• 80 percent of success is showing up.
• It may be stormy now but it never rains forever.
• Live more, worry less.
• I accept who I am.
• The way you speak to yourself matters the most.
• Aspire to inspire before you expire.
• If you don’t believe in yourself, who will?
• Each day, I get an opportunity to learn something new.
• Learn to wait. There’s always time for everything.
• Dreams don’t have expiration dates, keep going.

The Best Instagram Quotes

Sometimes there just aren’t better words than those already spoken. No matter the occasion, here are some quotes to set the mood.

• “Never too old, never too bad, never too late, never too sick to start from scratch once again.” —Bikram Choudhury
• “A year from now you will wish you had started today.” —Karen Lamb
• “The only way to have a friend is to be one.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.” —Wayne Gretzky
• “The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.” —J.R.R. Tolkien
• “I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.” —Helen Keller
• “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” —Anonymous
• “Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.” —C.S. Lewis
• “So be sure when you step, Step with care and great tact. And remember that life’s A Great Balancing Act. And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed! (98 and ¾ percent guaranteed) Kid, you’ll move mountains.” —Dr. Seuss
• “To find someone who will love you for no reason, and to shower that person with reasons, that is the ultimate happiness.” —Robert Brault

Use Instagram Captions to Entertain Your Audience

This is just a taste of the many Instagram captions you can use to add a little flavor to your feed. But there are many more available. To be truly original, why not pen your own?

And once you have nailed that aspect of posting on Instagram, we recommend discovering the things you didn’t know you could do on Instagram.

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7 Ways to Fix Windows File Explorer Search

Windows 10 File Explorer search is a handy option to find files. If you have a folder full of documents, you can enter a keyword. Or, if you don’t know the name of the file but you do know the file extension, you can search that way with a wildcard.

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Unless, of course, File Explorer search is not working. File Explorer search can break for several reasons. Thankfully, most of these errors are easy to resolve.

Here are seven ways you can fix File Explorer search.

1. Make Sure Windows Search Service Is Running

The first thing to do is to make sure the Windows Search service is up and running. Windows Services control a lot of what Windows can do. If a service switches off or bugs out, it can have unexpected consequences. Accordingly, if the Windows Search service is off or broken, you cannot search for your file using the File Explorer search.

Press Windows Key + R to open the Run dialog, then input services.msc.

Scroll down the list of services until you find Windows Search, then check its status.

If Windows Search is running, this is not the cause of the issue. If it’s not running, double-click Windows Search to open the options, then Start the service. Hit Apply and close the options.

If you want to restart the Windows Search service in the hope that it jolts it to life, select Stop, then Apply, then Start, then Apply.

2. Rebuild the Search Index

If stopping and starting the Windows Search service doesn’t coax File Explorer search back into life, you can rebuild the search index. The search index is a long list of every file on your computer. If Windows doesn’t have an index of where files are, it cannot search your computer to tell you where to look for them (or guide you right to them!).

Rebuilding the search index can take a little while. However, it is one of the best ways to resolve a Windows File Explorer search issue.

Press Windows Key + R to open the Run dialog, then input the following:

rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL srchadmin.dll

The Windows Indexing Options panel will appear. Select Advanced, then under Troubleshooting, select Rebuild.

Select OK when Windows tells you the rebuild will take “a long time,” then wait for the process to complete. You can use your computer during this time, but the File Explorer search won’t work until the re-indexing is complete.

3. Make Sure the Search Index Includes Your Drive Locations

If rebuilding the search index doesn’t fix your File Explorer and Windows search issues, make sure the folders you’re searching are included in the index.

Reopen the Windows Indexing Options panel (as shown in the previous section). Select Modify. Now, check your Indexed Locations.

At the very least, you want to index your C:/ drive. For most people, C:/ contains your operating system, Windows user profile, photos, videos, music, and documents. If you do not include those folders in the index, File Explorer search will miss many of your files.

After selecting your drive locations, press OK. Windows will index the new locations automatically. Depending on the size of the drives you add, indexing could take some time.

4. Run the Windows Index Troubleshooter

The Windows Index Options panel is home to a troubleshooter, too. Head back to the Windows Index Options panel.

Under Troubleshooting, select Troubleshoot search and indexing. You then have four options:

Select your search indexing issue, then continue. The Search and Indexing Troubleshooter will apply fixes automatically, then tell you about any changes.

The fourth option is a little different. You can attempt to describe your File Explorer search issues, and Windows 10 will keyword match the errors and attempt to provide a fix. It is hit and miss, as you might imagine.

5. Switch Cortana Off

Switching Cortana off can sometimes jolt File Explorer back into life, such is the integration of the tool with Windows search options. Cortana was the specific cause of a broken Windows Search issue, too.

Right-click your taskbar and select Task Manager. Open the Processes tab, then scroll down to Cortana. Right-click the Cortana process and select End task.

Cortana will shut down, then reopen.

6. Run CHKDSK

If at this point File Explorer search still isn’t working, you need to consider some more serious fixes. The Windows Check Disk (CHKDSK) is a Windows system tool you can use to verify the file system. You can set CHKDSK to fix any issues it runs into as it runs.

Type command prompt in your Start menu search bar, then right-click the best match and select Run as administrator. (Alternatively, press Windows key + X, then select Command Prompt (Admin) from the menu.)

Next, type chkdsk /r and press Enter. The command will scan your system for errors and fix any issues along the way.

7. Run SFC

The System File Check (SFC) is another Windows file check tool. Instead of checking your entire drive for errors, like CHKDSK, the System File Check analyzes and fixes your Windows installation specifically.

Before running the SFC command, it is best to double-check that it is completely functional.

DISM stands for Deployment Image Servicing and Management. DISM is an integrated Windows utility with a vast range of functions. In this case, the DISM Restorehealth command ensures that our next fix will work properly. Work through the following steps.

1. Type Command Prompt (Admin) in the Start menu search bar, then right-click and select Run as administrator to open an elevated Command Prompt.
2. Type the following command and press Enter: DISM /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
3. Wait for the command to complete. The process can take up to 20 minutes, depending on your system’s health. The process seems stuck at certain times, but wait for it to complete.
4. When the process completes, type sfc /scannow and press Enter.

Fixing File Explorer and Windows Search

When File Explorer search isn’t working, finding a specific file is time-consuming. Fixing File Explorer search doesn’t take long and will help you keep tabs on your most important (or completely lost!) files.

Windows isn’t the only place where the loss of a search function is irritating and time-consuming. Here’s how you fix Outlook search when it is not working. Or, if your issues don’t involve search, here are some of the best free Windows 10 repair tools to fix any problem.

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3 Ways to Move and Rearrange Pages in Microsoft Word

Depending on the type of document you’re creating in Microsoft Word, you may end up having to do some rearranging. This is especially likely for lengthy documents.

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Unfortunately, you won’t find a way to reorder your pages in Word like you can rearrange your slides in PowerPoint. But that’s because Word is a word processing application, so it’s like one long, scrolling document. Whereas PowerPoint is a presentation application built with slides as their own elements.

But rest assured, there are ways to move and rearrange pages in Microsoft Word and we’ll show you three easy methods.

Move Pages in Word With the Navigation Pane

The Navigation Pane in Word is a handy tool for jumping to certain spots in your document without having to scroll or search.

For this reason, the Navigation Pane method is the way to go if you use headings in your document. And it’s most helpful if you have a heading at the top of each page.

1. Click the View tab and check the box for Navigation Pane.
2. When the tool opens on the left side of your document, click Headings in the pane.
3. Select the heading for the page you want to move and drag it to its new location in the Headings list.

As you drag the heading, you’ll see a dark line appear. When the line is in the spot where you want to move the heading (page), release.

You’ll then see the heading and its contents in the new position and your document will reflect this change as well.

Tips for the Navigation Pane Method

Here are a couple of tips to help you with this method that may answer questions you have.

Formatting Text With Headings

If you want to use this method, but don’t currently have your text formatted with headings, click the Home tab, select your text, and choose a heading in the Styles section of the Word ribbon. Once you move your pages, you can remove the headings if you like.

Order of Headings in the Pane

Remember that all headings in the Navigation Pane are listed in descending order. So the order will be Heading 1 at the top, then Heading 2, Heading 3, and so on. To move an entire page, or section, use the highest-level heading for that section.

Move Pages in Word With Keyboard Cut and Paste

If using the Navigation Pane isn’t practical for your type of document, then a good, old cut and paste will do the trick. And if you prefer to maneuver this way with your keyboard, here’s how to move a page.

1. Place your cursor at the very beginning of the text on the page you want to move.
2. Hold your Shift key and press the Page Down (Pg Dn) key. This will grab a screen’s worth of text. If you need to select more, continue holding Shift and press Page Down again. You can do this until you have it all.
3. Press Control (Ctrl) + X to cut the text you selected.
4. Move your cursor to the spot where you want the page moved to and press Control (Ctrl) + V to paste the text you just cut in Step 3.

Move Pages in Word With Mouse Cut and Paste

Maybe you are a pro with your mouse and would rather use it than the keyboard for this process. You’ll do the same thing to cut and paste the text, but a little differently.

1. Place your cursor at the beginning of the text on the page you want to move.
2. Hold the left mouse button while you drag through all of the text on the page, then release.
3. Right-click and choose Cut or click Cut on the Home tab under Clipboard.
4. Move your cursor to the spot where you want the page moved to, right-click, and pick Paste from the shortcut menu or click Paste on the Home tab under Clipboard.

Tips for the Cut and Paste Methods

Regardless if you use the cut and paste method with your keyboard or mouse, here are a few tips to help.

Remember Undo Move

If you make a mistake during the cut and paste process, remember that you can undo what you just did. Click the Undo Move button in your Quick Access Toolbar. This will undo your last change, but you can click the arrow next to the button to go back through your history changes.

If you would like to customize settings in Word like that Quick Access Toolbar, here are some tips to check out.

Copy Instead of Cut

If cutting text from your document makes you nervous, you can use a copy, paste, delete method instead. Follow the same steps for using your keyboard or mouse to select the text, but rather than choosing Cut, choose Copy.

Then, once you paste that selected text into the spot where you want it, you can go back and delete it where you copied it from originally. This will take longer than a simple cut and paste, however, it might feel safer to you.

Use Your Clipboard History

Another cool way to paste a page you cut (or copy) is via the Clipboard History tool on Windows. Move your cursor to the spot in your Word document where you want the page you just cut (or copied). Use the keyboard shortcut Windows key + V to open your clipboard history. Then click an item in the history window to paste it.

Rearrange Pages in Word Your Way

One of these three methods should help you rearrange pages in Word the way you want them. They all have their advantages and are efficient in various scenarios. So you might use one for a certain type of document but another for a different type.

We’re also here to help with related tutorials for Word if you’re interested. Here’s how to copy and paste faster in Word or how to delete problematic blank pages.

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You Can Still Upgrade to Windows 10 for Free! Here’s How

Microsoft finally ended support for consumer copies of Windows 7 in January 2020. If you’re one of the many holdouts, the end is finally nigh. You’re faced with a choice of upgrading to Windows 10 or leaving your computer increasingly vulnerable to an endless list of cyberthreats.

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Thankfully, you’re in luck—for now. It is still possible to upgrade to Windows 10 for free by using a method that was officially axed in 2018.

Upgrade to Windows 10 for Free

Follow the instructions below to learn how to upgrade to Windows 10 for free:

1. Head to the official Windows download website.
2. Look for Create Windows 10 installation media > Download tool now.
3. Click on Run.
4. Select Upgrade this PC now (or Create installation media for another PC if you want to install Windows 10 on a different machine).
5. Follow the remain on-screen installation prompts.

Despite being a loophole, there is nothing wrong with upgrading to Windows 10 using this method. You will receive a full and legal Windows 10 license. It will b connected to your Microsoft Account profile.

But remember, we cannot guarantee how long this loophole will remain open. Microsoft could pull the plug at any moment. If you’d rather save yourself some cash, you need to move quickly.

How to Pay For Windows 10 Upgrade

Even if Microsoft does close the loophole to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 for free, it will always be possible to upgrade to Windows 10 via the Microsoft website. A Windows 10 license costs a one-off fee $139.

If you want to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro, the cost is $199. Windows 10 Pro gives you some extra features, including remote desktop, BitLocker, the ability to create and run virtual machines with Hyper-V, and Azure Active Directory.

Regardless of which package you choose, you can choose to download the installer for your new copy of Windows for either the desktop or a USB stick. Make your choice directly on the Microsoft website. Once the installation app is running, just follow the on-screen instructions.

Lastly, you could hit the shops and upgrade your laptop at the same time. A mid-spec Windows 10 laptop is very reasonably priced. To learn more, check out our list of the best Windows laptops.

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The 5 Best Farming Games on Android and iOS

Here at MakeUseOf, we love gaming. We like lots of different genres, including farming games. There’s something intensely relaxing about raising livestock and watering crops without having to do any of the hard work. Hence our appreciation of farming sims.

While there are tons of farming games that you can play on PC, there are also plenty of free-to-play farming games available to play on mobile. So, after playing a bunch to sort the wheat from the chaff, here are the best farming games for your smartphone.

1. Tiny Sheep

Tiny Sheep is exactly what it sounds like—a mobile farming game that allows you to raise sheep on a rustic piece of land.

The main goal of this game? Buy sheep, feed the sheep, and sell their wool for new supplies to make your farm more efficient.

It’s like a cross between a pet game and a farming simulator. With absolutely adorable graphics and a very simple setup, Tiny Sheep ends up being really simple to use.

Right from the get-go, this farming sim guides you along your path to wooly dominance with handy visual instructions. There are both in-app purchases and in-game ads, but found that these didn’t spoil our fun.

Is Tiny Sheep the flashiest, most addictive game on our list? No, but it’s very entertaining.

Download: Tiny Sheep for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)

2. Hay Day

Hay Day was a farming simulation game that we honestly did not expect to enjoy as much as we did. On the surface it looks very similar to Farmville, which was definitely not a mark in its favor.

To our pleasant surprise, however, this game turned out to be fun and incredibly engaging. Hay Day strikes the right level between automation and customization. The goal of it is to raise livestock and plant crops to turn a profit. You can then use that profit to upgrade your farm.

Your farm will run on its own while you’re not actively playing the game. When you are actively playing it you can upgrade and buy new items, animals, or tools.

You can also move these items, animals, or tools around on your map to make your farm look exactly the way that you want.

Outside of this clever balance between automation and customization:

• The levelling-up system in Hay Day is simple to follow.
• The rewards are paced at an even speed so that the game doesn’t get boring, but you don’t run out of reasons to come back for more.

In fact, the game played so smoothly for us that we even changed our mind about the art style and the idea that it was “Farmville-esque.”

The best thing of all? While Hay Day uses in-app purchases, the game is still functional without them. You also don’t have to see so many ads that they interfere with the game itself.

Download: Hay Day for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)

3. Egg, Inc.

Egg, Inc. is a farming game that I’ve personally been playing for over a year, mostly because I’m a huge fan of its in-game aesthetic. If you open it up, you’ll see that the game goes for bright, quirky, and colorful, with a sort of “indie” look.

As an almost entirely automated tapping game that runs in the background, the goal of Egg, Inc. is to build up a poultry farm and turn it into a massive, profit-making machine.

The ways that you can increase your profits are by:

• Tapping the screen to lay more eggs.
• Researching new chicken-raising technologies.
• Upgrading your farm building or supplies.

While this game does have a nice look, it’s unfortunately one of those extremely simple apps that only needs to be played for 10 minutes a night. There is basically no free choice left for the gamer, due to everything being automated. So anything more than 10 minutes and you’ll get bored.

Download: Egg, Inc. for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)

4. Blocky Farm

Looking for a game that is almost identical to Hay Day in terms of game mechanics, but which has a distinctly different look?

Try Blocky Farm, a free-to-play farming simulator available for both Android and iOS. When we say the two games are nearly identical, by the way, we mean literally.

The gameplay between these two apps mirrors each other.

• Both Hay Day and Blocky Farm have a similar level of in-game purchases, and the same level of ads.
• Both of them give you easy-to-understand instructions, and help you work towards your goal of building up a profitable farm.
• In both games, the way to turn a profit is through raising livestock and planting crops.

The only major difference is that Blocky Farm mimics an older style of pixelated graphics. You also get to buy, raise, and play with your own pets early on in the game, unrelated to the farm itself.

Choosing which game you want to engage with really depends on what kind of graphics you like, as they’re both so similar. If you love anything with a retro aesthetic, here’s an additional list of free retro mobile games for nostalgia junkies.

Download: Blocky Farm for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)

5. Farm Heroes Saga

Last on our list is Farm Heroes Saga, a tapping puzzle game with a distinct farming sim appeal.

Like Tiny Sheep, Farm Heroes Saga is kind of a cross-genre blend. The main goal of the game is to match different fruits and veggies on a checkered playing board.

• When you match three or more veggies of the same type in a row, they are cleared from the map.
• The points gained from these matches go towards your overall score, which needs to pass a certain threshold in order for you to level up.
• Through the points that you gain on each level, you also get to move your player across a larger playing board in Farm Heroes Saga—similar to the winding path that you see in My Tamagotchi Forever, another free-to-play mobile game.
• As you reach the higher levels, you can gain different animals, objects and power-ups to help you around the farm.

While this game is absolutely not a simulator in the traditional sense—it definitely leans more on the puzzle side—Farm Heroes Saga is a good alternative for people who want to play something farming-related for a few minutes each night.

Download: Farm Heroes Saga for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)

The Best Farming Games to Scratch That Itch

Perhaps the reason why mobile farming games are so popular has to do less with farming itself and more with the “idea” of it. After all, farming is a labor-intensive career, but it’s fun to imagine growing your own food with almost no hard work involved.

Looking for some other simulator games to play? Then here is a list of the best virtual pet games for your mobile.

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Google’s Sundar Pichai doesn’t want you to be clear-eyed about AI’s dangers

Alphabet and Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, is the latest tech giant kingpin to make a public call for AI to be regulated while simultaneously encouraging lawmakers towards a dilute enabling framework that does not put any hard limits on what can be done with AI technologies.

In an op-ed published in today’s Financial Times, Pichai makes a headline-grabbing call for artificial intelligence to be regulated. But his pitch injects a suggestive undercurrent that puffs up the risk for humanity of not letting technologists get on with business as usual and apply AI at population-scale — with the Google chief claiming: “AI has the potential to improve billions of lives, and the biggest risk may be failing to do so” — thereby seeking to frame ‘no hard limits’ as actually the safest option for humanity.

Simultaneously the pitch downplays any negatives that might cloud the greater good that Pichai implies AI will unlock — presenting “potential negative consequences” as simply the inevitable and necessary price of technological progress.

It’s all about managing the level of risk, is the leading suggestion, rather than questioning outright whether the use of a hugely risk-laden technology such as facial recognition should actually be viable in a democratic society.

“Internal combustion engines allowed people to travel beyond their own areas but also caused more accidents,” Pichai writes, raiding history for a self-serving example while ignoring the vast climate costs of combustion engines (and the resulting threat now posed to the survival of countless species on Earth).

“The internet made it possible to connect with anyone and get information from anywhere, but also easier for misinformation to spread,” he goes on. “These lessons teach us that we need to be clear-eyed about what could go wrong.”

For “clear-eyed” read: Accepting of the technology-industry’s interpretation of ‘collateral damage’. (Which, in the case of misinformation and Facebook, appears to run to feeding democracy itself into the ad-targeting meat-grinder.)

Meanwhile, not at all mentioned in Pichai’s discussion of AI risks: The concentration of monopoly power that artificial intelligence appears to be very good at supercharging.

Funny that.

Of course it’s hardly surprising a tech giant that, in recent years, rebranded an entire research division to ‘Google AI’ — and has previously been called out by some of its own workforce over a project involving applying AI to military weapons technology — should be lobbying lawmakers to set AI ‘limits’ that are as dilute and abstract as possible.

The only thing that’s better than zero regulation are laws made by useful idiots who’ve fallen hook, line and sinker for industry-expounded false dichotomies — such as those claiming it’s ‘innovation or privacy’.

Pichai’s intervention also comes at a strategic moment, with US lawmakers eyeing AI regulation and the White House seemingly throwing itself into alignment with tech giants’ desires for ‘innovation-friendly’ rules which make their business easier. (To wit: This month White House CTO Michael Kratsios warned in a Bloomberg op-ed against “preemptive, burdensome or duplicative rules that would needlessly hamper AI innovation and growth”.)

The new European Commission, meanwhile, has been sounding a firmer line on both AI and big tech.

It has made tech-driven change a key policy priority, with president Ursula von der Leyen making public noises about reining in tech giants. She has also committed to publish “a coordinated European approach on the human and ethical implications of Artificial Intelligence” within her first 100 days in office. (She took up the post on December 1, 2019 so the clock is ticking.)

Last week a leaked draft of the Commission proposals for pan-EU AI regulation suggest it’s leaning towards a relatively light touch approach (albeit, the European version of light touch is considerably more involved and interventionist than anything born in a Trump White House, clearly) — although the paper does float the idea of a temporary ban on the use of facial recognition technology in public places.

The paper notes that such a ban would “safeguard the rights of individuals, in particular against any possible abuse of the technology” — before arguing against such a “far-reaching measure that might hamper the development and uptake of this technology”, in favor of relying on provisions in existing EU law (such as the EU data protection framework, GDPR), in addition to relevant tweaks to current product safety and liability laws.

While it’s not yet clear which way the Commission will jump on regulating AI, even the lightish-touch version its considering would likely be a lot more onerous than Pichai would like.

In the op-ed he calls for what he couches as “sensible regulation” — aka taking a “proportionate approach, balancing potential harms, especially in high-risk areas, with social opportunities”.

For “social opportunities” read: The plentiful ‘business opportunities’ Google is spying — assuming the hoped for vast additional revenue scale it can get by supercharging expansion of AI-powered services into all sorts of industries and sectors (from health to transportation to everywhere else in between) isn’t derailed by hard legal limits on where AI can actually be applied.

“Regulation can provide broad guidance while allowing for tailored implementation in different sectors,” Pichai urges, setting out a preference for enabling “principles” and post-application “reviews”, to keep the AI spice flowing.

The op-ed only touches very briefly on facial recognition — despite the FT editors choosing to illustrate it with an image of the tech. Here Pichai again seeks to reframe the debate around what is, by nature, an extremely rights-hostile technology — talking only in passing of “nefarious uses” of facial recognition.

Of course this wilfully obfuscates the inherent risks of letting blackbox machines make algorithmic guesses at identity every time a face happens to pass through a public space.

You can’t hope to protect people’s privacy in such a scenario. Many other rights are also at risk, depending on what else the technology is being used for. So, really, any use of facial recognition is laden with individual and societal risk.

But Pichai is seeking to put blinkers on lawmakers. He doesn’t want them to see inherent risks baked into such a potent and powerful technology — pushing them towards only a narrow, ill-intended subset of “nefarious” and “negative” AI uses and “consequences” as being worthy of “real concerns”. 

And so he returns to banging the drum for “a principled and regulated approach to applying AI” [emphasis ours] — putting the emphasis on regulation that, above all, gives the green light for AI to be applied.

What technologists fear most here is rules that tell them when artificial intelligence absolutely cannot apply.

Ethics and principles are, to a degree, mutable concepts — and ones which the tech giants have become very practiced at claiming as their own, for PR purposes, including by attaching self-styled ‘guard-rails’ to their own AI operations. (But of course there’s no actual legal binds there.)

At the same time data-mining giants like Google are very smooth operators when it comes to gaming existing EU rules around data protection, such as by infesting their user-interfaces with confusing dark patterns that push people to click or swipe their rights away.

But a ban on applying certain types of AI would change the rules of the game. Because it would put society in the driving seat.

Laws that contained at least a moratorium on certain “dangerous” applications of AI — such as facial recognition technology, or autonomous weapons like the drone-based system Google was previously working on — have been called for by some far-sighted regulators.

And a ban would be far harder for platform giants to simply bend to their will.

So for a while I was willing to buy into the whole tech ethics thing but now I’m fully on the side of tech refusal. We need to be teaching refusal.

— Jonathan Senchyne (@jsench) January 16, 2020

A 10-point plan to reboot the data industrial complex for the common good

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Google takes on AWS and Azure in India with Airtel cloud deal

Google has inked a deal with India’s third-largest telecom operator as the American giant looks to grow its cloud customer base in the key overseas market that is increasingly emerging as a new cloud battleground for AWS and Microsoft.

Google Cloud announced on Monday that the new partnership, effective starting today, enables Airtel to offer G Suite to small and medium-sized businesses as part of the telco’s ICT portfolio.

Airtel, which has amassed over 325 million subscribers in India, said it currently serves 2,500 large businesses and over 500,000 small and medium-sized businesses and startups in the country. The companies did not share details of their financial arrangement.

In a statement, Thomas Kurian, chief executive of Google Cloud, said, “the combination of G Suite’s collaboration and productivity tools with Airtel’s digital business offerings will help accelerate digital innovations for thousands of Indian businesses.”

The move follows Reliance Jio, India’s largest telecom operator, striking a similar deal with Microsoft to sell cloud services to small businesses. The two announced a 10-year partnership to “serve millions of customers.”

AWS, which leads the cloud market, interestingly does not maintain any similar deals with a telecom operator — though it did in the past. Deals with carriers, which were very common a decade ago as tech giants looked to acquire new users in India, illustrates the phase of the cloud adoption in the nation.

Nearly half a billion people in India came online last decade. And slowly, small businesses and merchants are also beginning to use digital tools, storage services, and accept online payments. According to a report by lobby group Nasscom, India’s cloud market is estimated to be worth more than $7 billion in three years.

Like in many other markets, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are locked in an intense battle to win cloud customers in India. All of them offer near identical features and are often willing to pay out a potential client’s remainder credit to the rival to convince them to switch, industry executives have told TechCrunch.

The three companies have also launched a range of tools and conducted training in India in recent years to help mom-and-pop stores easily build presence on the web. Last week, Amazon announced it was investing $1 billion into its India operations to help about 10 million merchants come online.

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Samsung invests $500M to set up a smartphone display plant in India

Samsung, which once led India’s smartphone market, is investing $500 million in its India operations to set up a manufacturing plant at the outskirts of New Delhi to produce displays.

The company disclosed the investment and its plan in a filing to the local regulator earlier this month. The South Korean giant said the plant would produce displays for smartphones as well as a wide-range of other electronics devices.

In the filing, the company disclosed that it has allocated some land area from its existing factory in Noida for the new plant.

In 2018, Samsung opened a factory in Noida that it claimed was the world’s largest mobile manufacturing plant. For that factory, the company had committed to spend about $700 million.

The new plant should help Samsung further increase its capacity to produce smartphone components locally and access a range of tax benefits that New Delhi offers.

Those benefits would come in handy to the company as it faces off Xiaomi, the Chinese smartphone vendor that put an end to Samsung’s lead in India.

Samsung is now the second largest smartphone player in India, which is the world’s second largest market with nearly 500 million smartphone users. The company in recent months has also lost market share to Chinese brand Realme, which is poised to take over the South Korean giant in the quarter that ended in December last year, according to some analysts.

TechCrunch has reached out to Samsung for comment.

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Samsung invests $500M to set up a smartphone display plant in India

Samsung, which once led India’s smartphone market, is investing $500 million in its India operations to set up a manufacturing plant at the outskirts of New Delhi to produce displays.

The company disclosed the investment and its plan in a filing to the local regulator earlier this month. The South Korean giant said the plant would produce displays for smartphones as well as a wide-range of other electronics devices.

In the filing, the company disclosed that it has allocated some land area from its existing factory in Noida for the new plant.

In 2018, Samsung opened a factory in Noida that it claimed was the world’s largest mobile manufacturing plant. For that factory, the company had committed to spend about $700 million.

The new plant should help Samsung further increase its capacity to produce smartphone components locally and access a range of tax benefits that New Delhi offers.

Those benefits would come in handy to the company as it faces off Xiaomi, the Chinese smartphone vendor that put an end to Samsung’s lead in India.

Samsung is now the second largest smartphone player in India, which is the world’s second largest market with nearly 500 million smartphone users. The company in recent months has also lost market share to Chinese brand Realme, which is poised to take over the South Korean giant in the quarter that ended in December last year, according to some analysts.

TechCrunch has reached out to Samsung for comment.

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