Technology

Much like certain other trends like 3D TVs, this helps us see how often "visionaries" at the top of a company are charmed by ideas that no one on the ground is interested in. Same with blockchain, cryptocurrency, and so many other buzzwords.

So maybe I'll mention it again: The Accountable Capitalism Act would require 40% of a company's board be made up of democratically voted employees, who can provide more practical input about how top-level decisions would affect the people working there.

I have Google Gemini turned off on my pixel, because I find that it makes my experience genuinely worse.

I hate that i can no longer trust what comes out of my phone camera to be an accurate representation of reality. I turn off all the AI enhancement stuff but who knows what kind of fuckery is baked into the firmware.

NO, i dont want fake AI depth of field. NO, i do not want fake AI "makeup" fixing my ugly face. NO, i do not want AI deleting tourists in the background of my picture of the eiffel tower.

NO, i do not want AI curating my memories and reality. Sure, my vacation photos have shitty lighting and bad composition. But they are MY photos and MY memories of something i experienced personally. AI should not be "fixing" that for me

That's because it is.

Pointless resource hogging bloatware.

It is absolutely useless for everyday simple tasks I find.

Who the fuck needs AI to SUMMARIZE an EMAIL, GOOGLE?

IT'S FIVE LINES

Get out of my face Gemini!

People here like to shit on AI, but it has its use cases. It's nice that I can search for "horse" in Google Photos and get back all pictures of horses and it is also really great for creating small scripts. I, however, do not need a LLM chatbot on my phone and I really don't want it everywhere in every fucking app with a subscription model.

This is what happens when companies prioritize hype over privacy and try to monetize every innovation. Why pay €1,500 for a phone only to have basic AI features? AI should solve real problems, not be a cash grab.

Imagine if AI actually worked for users:

• Show me all settings to block data sharing and maximize privacy.
• Explain how you optimized my battery last week and how much time it saved.
• Automatically silence spam calls without selling my data to third parties.
• Detect and block apps that secretly drain data or access my microphone.
• Automatically organize my photos by topic without uploading them to the cloud.
• Make everything i could do with TASKER with only just saying it in plain words.

It's really pointless to most people, it has its use case. But it was just a hype train everyone got on like a few years ago many did with blockchain, another nice technology but only for certain use cases. I don't want nor need an always on AI to search through my phone and spy on me. I have already had overbearing exes try that. It's actually a big reason I am considering switching to a Pixel 10 as my next phone and just installing Graphene OS and calling it a day as my daily driver.

Generative AI is peaking in it's ability to produce cringe boomer memes from a prompt. Everything else.. MEH.

"AI" (as in LLMs for the sake of having LLMs accessible on your phone) is so fucking useless...

From a technical standpoint it's pretty cool, I love playing around with Ollama on my PC every now and then.

But the average Joe seems to think it's some magic being with absolute fucking knowledge you can talk to using your phone. Apart from being stupid, I think this might actually endanger human capabilities like critical thinking as well as reasoning and creativity.

Well, as a user of both, I agree.

I think the article is missing the point on two levels.

First is the significance of this data, or rather lack of significance. The internet existed for 20-some years before the majority of people felt they had a use for it. AI is similarly in a finding-its-feet phase where we know it will change the world but haven't quite figured out the details. After a period of increased integration into our lives it will reach a tipping point where it gains wider usage, and we're already very close to that.

Also they are missing what I would consider the two main reasons people don't use it yet.

First, many people just don't know what to do with it (as was the case with the early internet). The knowledge/imagination/interface/tools aren't mature enough so it just seems like a lot of effort for minimal benefits. And if the people around you aren't using it, you probably don't feel the need.

Second reason is that the thought of it makes people uncomfortable or downright scared. Quite possibly with good reason. But even if it all works out well in the end, what we're looking at is something that will drive the pace of change beyond what human nature can easily deal with. That's already a problem in the modern world but we aint seen nothing yet. The future looks impossible to anticipate, and that's scary. Not engaging with AI is arguably just hiding your head in the sand, but maybe that beats contemplating an existential terror that you're powerless to stop.

I hate that nowadays AI == LLM/chatbot.

I love the AI classifiers that keep me safe from spam or that help me categorise pictures. I love the AI based translators that allow me to write in virtually any language almost like a real speaker.

What I hate is these super advanced stocastic parrots that manage to pass the Turing test and, so, people assume they think.

I am pretty sure that they asked specifically about LLM/chatbots the percentage of people not caring would be even higher

Everybody hates AI, and these companies keep trying to push it because they're so desperate for investors. Oh, I want to be a fly on the wall of a meeting room when the bubble finally pops.

Doesn't help that I don't know what this "AI" is supposed to be doing on my phone.
Touch up a few photos on my phone? Ok go ahead, ill turn it off when I want a pure photography experience (or use a DSLR).
Text prediction? Yeah why not.. I mean, is it the little things like that?
So it feels like either these companies dont know how to use "AI" or they dont know how to market it... or more likely they know one way to market it and the marketing department is driving the development. Im sure theres good uses but it seems like they dont want to put in the work and just give us useless ones.