Comment by bityard
2 days ago
Well, you're not wrong about novelty being a much rarer thing in the past but people rarely drove alone in total silence. 8-tracks and cassettes came along eventually but even before then, people listened to the radio which had a wide variety of music, news, sports, and call-in shows. Truckers had CB radios and would talk to other truckers and drivers to pass the time.
Those who didn't see much of the world before the last two decades have this impression that everyone was far less connected to the world and each other before the Internet. That's not strictly true... the Internet made long-distance connections and access to content easier, but the ease of access to entertainment (namely, social media) has greatly weakened local connections.
I saw somewhere here saying they want some kind of AI appliance that learns their regular commute and warns them about traffic and construction and I was like, dude, every radio station had regular traffic reports from helicopter pilots through the whole morning and evening drive times.
An individualized report tailored to your route at your time is much higher utility than periodic reports of a few popular routes provided at random intervals.
Also, all the big map apps already provide real time traffic so not sure what LLMs (“AI”) bring to the table.