Technology

I know it is very much de rigeur on here to bash AI but I’ve personally wished for a more ‘intelligent’ user experience for the longest time. Most tasks that are common for professionals or for private use on a computer have remained virtually unchanged for decades. Find file, open file, process, read, whatever, find another file, do the same, combine them into something new, produce a new visual or summary of that something new, stop to check email, go back, etc. Most people use a small number of popular applications that haven’t evolved much. Same with OSs and file management.

I am tired of the same old process, the endless stream of clickety clicks to get the simplest things done, and have often wished for a digital assistant that would offer up options, take instruction in natural language and have access to the file system, email, etc, to help me complete daily tasks, alert me to important things happening in the background, etc. I remember already a decade ago thinking surely this will be possible one day, just like in the movies. And now it’s here, it’s a privacy and security quagmire, because it can’t run local, not efficiently enough just yet, but it’s here, and it works only sometimes and many people are up in arms against it.

So what gives? I think the idea of a computer that is now an intelligent and maybe even proactive digital agent instead of a dutiful code execution machine is very compelling. So it’s natural that some people are super excited about it on a personal level. But it doesn’t work as well as advertised yet and accepting such a huge ugh… paradigm shift is not going to be easy. Not unless the AI proves itself equal (and completely trustworthy) or better than the user. But then the user may fear it or resent it for those very reasons.

Unpopular opinion: Apple could make it work better as a true OS-level all around assistant given their experience and control over OS and apps but they are lagging behind for now. And Microsoft is busy being Microsoft, angering its users by trying to push its own vision of the future down users’ throats without sufficient market or product testing.

Anyway, long post to say: If I am honest with myself, I actually have always wanted an AI to assist me in my work, but like in the movies, where it just works, seamlessly, and it just ‘gets’ you and you can delegate some busywork to it and rest assured that it isn’t spying on you nor messing anything up. Not like in the dystopian movies where it goes horribly wrong and you end up begging it for mercy. And right now we’re neither here nor there.