gcheliotis

Believe me I’m old enough to be set in my ways too. Trends come and go and the way I work hasn’t changed much. But that is also the force of habit. Even if the perfect AI were available today and I could talk to my computer for most tasks I’d have a hard time adjusting, even if I can see the potential and think that current workflows will someday seem very antiquated and inefficient.

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.

The moment we use the NIMBY label we prejudice ourselves against potentially legitimate local and global concerns and specific local protest movements. I do that too on some issues but do wonder sometimes whether I’m being unfair. I guess the determining factors would be how big a sacrifice a local community is asked to make, how great the greater good that sacrifice will serve, also who is protesting and what arguments they bring forth, what values they stand for, how these values align with yours, etc.

Hmm I am not sure I understand what you’re saying or that you understood anything I said. Maybe we are talking past each other. Nevermind, let’s forget about incels. Main point is whatever your preferences, framing them positively helps.

Preferences are fine. It still matters how you express them. In the current zeitgeist, with inceldom being a thing, the way these preferences were expressed smacked of that. The fact that you want to defend this specific trifecta of otherwise completely unrelated preferences, claiming they lead to a better life, makes me think you might be an incel yourself, or maybe just a conservative who’s consumed a few too many such videos promoting “family values” and purporting that these are threatened by a woman’s weight, or her having to raise a child on her own, or her seeking love and attention on dating apps. Truth is these are pretty much unrelated to whether one values family and to each other. It’s just a collection of caricatures, stereotypes, and cautionary tales circulating in conservative circles. If all one can think of when asked for their preferences regarding a partner are these known talking points, it is a little suspect. FWIW, I do not think we should marginalize conservatives. But I do think we should marginalize misogyny.

Well first these are the frequent talking points of incels when they harp on what they consider “low value females”. If you find yourself constantly repeating such devaluing talking points, maybe a break from the internet would do you good. Secondly, and more generally, it is usually more attractive to talk about the things you love than the things you hate. Unless you have already established that you and the other person hate the same things, then you can bond over that too.