Google CADIE, Gmail Autopilot and Google Chrome 3D: Google April Fools Pranks

Google is notorious for their April Fools Day pranks, and they are back at it this year with Google CADIE, Gmail Autopilot and Google Chrome 3D.

CADIE stands for Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity. In a press release dated March 31st at 11:59:59 pm, Google introduces CADIE as the "world's first 'artificial intelligence' task array system."

Through detailed technical specifications, CADIE is shown as a combination of "interconnected evolving agents", a "realistic world from which to learn" and "probabilistic Bayesian domains." In their April Fools prank, Google asks unnerving questions about CADIE such as "will humans be surpassed by artificial evolution?" and "how is she going to be held accountable, if at all?"

They don't quite explain what CADIE would be used for, but we to get to see CADIE's Homepage, or "CADIE's personal World Wide Website" which you can see a screenshot of above. It has the tagline, "All your personal World Wide Website belong to CADIE" and it features a lot of awful website design features with blaring music playing in the background, bright colors, moving animations and so on.

There are also images of pandas everywhere, as CADIE decided, "Through analysis of Google's index I have determined that I CADIE-powered submarine" in the new Google Earth 5.0, with other CADIE features as well.

Google Chrome 3D is powered by CADIE and is supposed to make browsing the internet available in 3D. You print up your glasses, enable 3D browsing and then you get 3D Internet. Google Chrome 3D was created because CADIE, "acknowledged the disconnect between the online world and the real world."

Gmail Autopilot is also powered by CADIE and it's an auto-response system for your email communication. You don't have to read or reply to any communications any longer. You can adjust your automatic style through measures for capitalization, typos, brevity and emoticon usage. And don't worry, if two people both have Gmail Autopilot, the two accounts can "happily converse with each other for up to three messages each."

There are samples of what Gmail Autopilot can do. One is "Respond to business proposals" and it's your Gmail Autopilot giving out your bank account and social security number to "Prince Joe Eboh" of Nigeria, in a classic online email scam.

Under "Manage relationships", Gmail Autopilot determines a tone of resentfully playful and passive aggressive in an email and concludes that you should "terminate relationship" with sender. Under the "Match your personal style" section, you respond to your therapist asking you about compulsive lying by saying you know lying is wrong, but you just won the lottery and ate an entire living shark.

Google's April Fools Day pranks never disappoint, and I made a note to myself for this morning to ensure I got to see them as soon as I woke up. Google's April Fools Day pranks are always elaborate and are sure to always trick some people, if not at least make them a bit unsettled about what's going on.

Of course, this isn't the first time Google got prank happy. Check out Google's April Fools Day pranks from 2008. Now relax, with CADIE on our side, there isn't anything we can't do fellow human entities! Enjoy your Gmail Autopilot, Google Earth 5.0 and Google Chrome 3D.