Something Else

Someday, an artificial intelligence might come to know us better than we know ourselves and be able to predict what we feel like eating based on our routine and mood. Until that day comes, if I want a restaurant recommendation, I’ll trust the subjective experience of another human being and ask them, instead of a LLM.

I wonder why we insist on artificially replacing the —perhaps few— things humans are actually good at, instead of letting machines take over the tasks we’re terrible at and wouldn’t miss doing anyway. So promoting a virtual assistant that will deprive us of human interaction and suggest places, activities, and food based on data likely biased by marketing doesn’t sound like a very appealing idea to me.

The same thing happens with mainstream robotics: for the general public, a robot has to have a little face, little hands, and two little legs. I don’t need a cute machine; I need one that’s as efficient as possible at unclogging pipes or defending my home from alien invaders. We’re already surrounded by millions of human beings with faces that have evolved over millions of years to be exactly as perfect as we need a face to be.

Let’s build something else.

exit(0);