[dasil003]

Maybe I'm just getting old, but I don't understand the appeal of the always-on AI assistant at all. Even leaving privacy/security issues aside, and even if it gets super smart and capable, it feels like it would have a distancing effect from my own life, and undermine my own agency in shaping it.

I'm not against AI in general, and some assistant-like functionality that functions on demand to search my digital footprint and handle necessary but annoying administrative tasks seems useful. But it feels like at some point it becomes a solution looking for a problem, and to squeeze out the last ounce of context-aware automation and efficiency you would have to outsource parts of your core mental model and situational awareness of your life. Imagine being over-scheduled like an executive who's assistant manages their calendar, but it's not a human it's a computer, and instead of it being for the purpose of maximizing the leverage of your attention as a captain of industry, it's just to maintain velocity on a personal rat race of your own making with no especially wide impact, even on your own psyche.

[larusso]

Totally agree. Sounds some envision want some level of Downton Abbey without the humans as service personal. A footman / maid in every room or corner to handle your requests at any given moment.

[kaffekaka]

Agree.

No matter how useful AI is and will become - I use AI daily, it is an amazing technology - so much of the discourse is indeed a solution looking for a problem. I have colleagues suggesting on exactly everything "can we put an MCP in it" and they don't even know what the point of MCP is!

[rglover]

I think it has very little to do with the assistant factor and more to do with the loneliness factor (at least in the West, people are getting lonelier, not less). In other words: sell it to them as a friendly companion/assistant, playing on emotions, while creating a sea of surveillance drones you can license back to the powers that be at a premium.

It's a hell of a mousetrap.

Starts playing Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

[fragmede]

It's the rat race. I gotta get my cheese, and fuck you, because you getting cheese means I go hungry. The kindergarden lesson on sharing got replaced by a lesson on intellectual property. Copyright, trademark, patents, and you.

Or we could opt out, and help everyone get ahead, on the rising tide lifts all boats theory, but from what I've seen, the trickle of trickle down economics is urine.

[alansaber]

May I refer you to WALL-E. The contention between hard vs convenient in our daily lives always seems to slowly edge towards convenient. If not in this generation, the next gen will be more willing to offload more.