AI is supposed to revolutionize everything, but I call BS. AI is 90% smoke, mirrors, and promises that will remain unfulfilled.
Given a choice between fulfilling a past promise and making a new one, tech companies will generally choose the latter.
Let’s look at an application that should benefit from AI and showcase AI’s potential but is still as dumb as a post: Navigation.
Nav is still confused by predictable events
I’m pulling off at a lonely exit in the middle of nowhere and the only thing there a truck stop of the same brand I’ve stopped at the last four times. Nav is of course confused and is trying to get me back on the highway in a panic because my moving to the right lane and slowing down prior to exiting clearly indicate the turn was an accident.
Not only is it confused by why I exited, it continues to try to give me directions after I’ve turned off my car, exited my car, and am standing at a urinal: “Head northwest and turn right onto state highway J.”
Nav is still makes bad suggestions
Navigation still makes stupid suggestions purely because it might save some meaninglessly small amount of time. No, I’m not getting off I75 on to a country road for 3 miles to get back on because it might save a minute. The trade-off between adding complexity and saving time is lost on Nav. I can’t even tell it explicitly to prefer interstate highways, or more usefully, whether I’m more interested in scenery or efficiency.
Nav knows the reviews are for every restaurant, restroom, gas station and anything else along the route. Why would Nav even think about sending me down some shitty set of backroads with one back-woods gas station with three 1-star reviews where the toilet is little better than a bucket in a closet to save 3 minutes on a 3-hour trip?
Or fails to make any suggestions
Nav can’t tell me anything useful about the route without me searching specifically, even though it is lunch time and my route has me driving past dinner. Maybe suggest a restaurant? Maybe an independent one since you know I hate chains?
Since I’ve stopped at every other rest stop, the last one was over an hour ago, my speed has increased a bit Nav could provide a list of upcoming rest stops in a soothing voice?
AI is another bubble
The common element in all of the above is that Nav doesn’t pay any attention to what choices I make or why I’m making them. For Pete’s sake I read nearly every day you’re tracking my every move, couldn’t you do something useful with that information?
Gathering information on past choices, analyzing them to determine heuristics likely to influence future choices….hmmm…sounds familiar.
The answer is because AI doesn’t really exist in the form we are being sold. If it did, we’d be seeing improvement in the apps we use every day instead of the stagnation we’ve been seeing.
We see useless suggestions at the top of search results. We have flawed summaries of text we type, and unreliable answers to questions we ask. AI is a bubble, and it’s gonna pop.
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