Comment by nicbou
13 hours ago
I am usually grossed out by AI when it fakes humanness, but not here, I think.
Steve Jobs saw the computer as a bicycle for the mind, a way to enable us to do more and be more. This is the metaphor against which I measure all technology.
I think that in this case, it helped someone make something deeply human by abstracting the tedium away. It did what a computer should do: aid a human with their task.
Technology has been feeling like a devil's bargain for a while now. This was a rare glimpse of how I used to see tech, and of why I was so excited about it.
What makes this example land differently for me is that the intent stays human all the way through
Yes! What do we want technology to do for us? In my opinion one important promise that was never fully realized is helping us to live a more enriched life. Social media does help people stay connected but it brings a lot of negatives that are well-known at this point.
If you build this encyclopedia as a purely robotic collector of facts that nobody reads, it’s probably more dystopian horror.
If you build it as a fun inner loop that reconnects you with people and memories and makes you more human, then it’s great.
We should endeavor to craft experiences that do the latter; right now we are back in the hacker days when small teams can build big new ideas, and big tech hasn’t taken over.
I love Robin Sloan's idea of apps as home-cooked meals. This is the only thing about AI that doesn't make me want to burn a datacenter to the ground.
https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/
>We should endeavor to craft experiences
It'd be better if we all turned this tech off and went to be with other people.
I don’t even know how much it helps people stay connected anymore since the shift to mobile. I was in an antique store recently and came upon a vintage “correspondence desk” which is basically a desk specialized for sorting and preparing mail. Back when people used to keep in touch by writing letters to each other this is what people with active remote friendships did. They’d spend a couple of hours at this desk reading letters they’ve received and sitting down to compose replies.
This is basically how social media was when you needed a computer to go online. You’d sit and sift through your feeds and there’d be message chains you respond to. You’re not really doing anything else while you’re doing that and you’re putting it out of mind once you step away. When Twitter first started getting big it was sort of a joke that people are talking to you while on the toilet. The idea that you were only ever half engaged with anything you’re doing was remarkable enough to be worth pointing out instead of taken for granted.
It’s just a lot more focused and intentional when you’re dedicating time and headspace to the task instead of “microdosing” on connection via a dopamine lottery. Even if you took away the ads and the interpolation of creator-content crowding out the connections with people you actually know, I think designing for an infinite scroll just inherently makes the thing less human-centered. It sets it up so you’re interacting with these atomized bits of ‘content’ rather than people.
That is because platforms both enable us and exploit us, they exploit both those who create/comment and those who read. They perform a necessary function but extract the value from it for their own good.