Talking AI Devices & Apps Will Make the Internet Worse!

[Wayde Robson]

Yeah, I'm the old man shaking fist at clouds. But about this latest plateau in generative "AI" that's being commodified into products and services, yes it's impressive and useful in many ways. But if it becomes the basis for how we interact with data and the Internet itself, I believe it's going to make the Internet worse in the longer term. The new gadgets, AI Pin and Rabbit R1 have received brutal reviews but show us a future direction our use of the Internet and data may take.

I can only hope we grow to compartmentalize this technology and apply it where it's useful without growing to rely on it for all of our information needs. The so-called "shitification" of the Internet and Dead Internet theories have been around a long time, and these generative AI products stand a good chance of making them indisputable.

Here are some thoughts on the new Internet-of-Voices technologies. They're already useful in some ways, but I'm concerned if we lose the sense of discovery that the Internet has given us through search. I fear the possible future of a dark, colorless voice-Internet that may one-day provide singular answers to all of our questions.

Rabbit R1 & AI Pin: Future of Smartphones or Tech Dead-End?

 

[j_garcia]

The reviews of all of those devices was a big fat MEH. All of them said, pointless, useless "fad" gadgets that really don't have a benefit to people.

I am not anti-AI. I did read an article the other day, which I can't find at the moment, but it stated that the time and cost to build, maintain and sanity check LLMs is much higher than the benefits they ultimately provide. These steps all require humans to create and maintain and that is before you even consider the electrical cost. This will, no doubt, improve over time, but is it really benefitting us?

So you are shifting the jobs that humans do to some semi-menial task that we currently can't trust AI to do for itself without recommending we put glass on pizza, with the benefits not justifying the effort and cost.

 

[corey]

I'm somewhat less than MEH. I'll never use a voice interface until the whole thing runs on my server, not someone else's server. I very much don't like the idea of someone else having access to every word I speak while listening for the trigger word or command.

 

[lovinthehd]

I have no desire to talk to my devices/apps. Much prefer a keyboard (full size whenever possible, too)

 

[Hobbit]

I didn't even get to the end when I was already wondering if this was funded by a venture capitalist group in the hopes of being bought up by a big corporation. A slight slant on what the articles said, but nonetheless.

Their product may be meh, but there may be some good IP behind them that may attract an Apple or Samsung who are thinking further down the road.

Interestingly I went to an AI talk today. The demonstrator used python coding as an example. The first thing I thought is that's only one way to do it. If I do a google search I see more alternatives and learn more.

 

[Wayde Robson]

I am not anti-AI. I did read an article the other day, which I can't find at the moment, but it stated that the time and cost to build, maintain and sanity check LLMs is much higher than the benefits they ultimately provide.

So you are shifting the jobs that humans do to some semi-menial task that we currently can't trust AI to do for itself without recommending we put glass on pizza, with the benefits not justifying the effort and cost.

I'm definitely MEH about the devices around AI, considering that any smartphone will do it better. But I'm also not anti-AI via these new LLMs. I find it an excellent tool and a useful search alternative for learning new concepts. But only when I can verify what I'm learning from authoritative sources online.

 

[MrBoat]

I end up getting hooked into some youtube videos, only to find it's speech been enhanced by AI, and it seemingly gets fatigued because by the middle-end of it, the thing is having a hard time correctly pronouncing the words, or what order they are supposed to be in. By then, it's too late and I have been hoodwinked into listening to that pap, and it irks me. Of course then I sh!tlist that channel and point out how truly lazy and untalented the creator of it must be, in the comments.

Talking to it, is half of what caused me to kick the echo dot to the curb and I had given it a few years. So many things asked of it were too hard for it to understand, and I believe the English language with all of it's slangs and regional differences are just too difficult for it. By the end of it, I was leaning into to it and trying to speak where everyone else (at least at work) didn't hear me arguing with the effing thing, especially when I would have to repeat myself. I gave it time to improve, but it seemed to get worse instead of better as time went. Anyway, good riddance to that.

Anymore, all it takes now is for me to remember just how convenient modern life is, even without AI. Anything beyond that is just laziness from being spoiled by too much convenience. Won't even get into "smart" technology and just how redundant most of that ends up being.

 

[j_garcia]

The reason those AI voiced YT vids are so bad is because they are probably not an English script; they're translated and that's why the grammar is so terrible. That's how they sound to me and they're easy to spot.

 

[MrBoat]

The reason those AI voiced YT vids are so bad is because they are probably not an English script; they're translated and that's why the grammar is so terrible. That's how they sound to me and they're easy to spot.

A lot of product review pages are like that so you are probably right. Still not a fan of AI regardless.

 

[Hobbit]

Why have people decided they don't like AI? For me, so far, it's not like wow. However, I expect it to be the next step in the evolution of computing. I have seen some AI generated vids that I thought were real.

The ONLY part I don't like is everything popping up telling me it's AI. I really don't care as long as it does what I need it to do. Moreso, because I always believe everything should be continuously improving anyway. It's just a tool.

Last night I was watching How Music Got Free on P+ and reminiscing to myself about how the PC was back then. It's almost hard to believe how far we've come since 2k (and the size of the 25" Sun monitor on my desk!). I even remembered thinking Ajax was amazing at one time. At least nothing was popping up telling me Ajax was running.

 

[j_garcia]

Why have people decided they don't like AI? For me, so far, it's not like wow. However, I expect it to be the next step in the evolution of computing. I have seen some AI generated vids that I thought were real.

The ONLY part I don't like is everything popping up telling me it's AI. I really don't care as long as it does what I need it to do. Moreso, because I always believe everything should be continuously improving anyway. It's just a tool.

Last night I was watching How Music Got Free on P+ and reminiscing to myself about how the PC was back then. It's almost hard to believe how far we've come since 2k (and the size of the 25" Sun monitor on my desk!). I even remembered thinking Ajax was amazing at one time. At least nothing was popping up telling me Ajax was running.

Not AI, AI devices whose only purpose is to tell you things you can look up yourself in seconds using an AI search engine lol. Just like you had "glassholes" before with 1st gen Google Glass. Now you will see idiots seemingly talking to themselves and those devices are always listening...to everything and everyone around you.

AI for solving previously unsolvable problems or cutting solving time down for previously very long solution times, is a benefit. With the right information on the right problem, it is useful. What does it get used for? People writing resumes and speeches or cheating on tests, is that really what all that compute and man-hours are for? That's how it seems, because that's the extent of the average person's idea of "useful".

 

[Hobbit]

Not AI, AI devices whose only purpose is to tell you things you can look up yourself in seconds using an AI search engine lol. Just like you had "glassholes" before with 1st gen Google Glass. Now you will see idiots seemingly talking to themselves and those devices are always listening...to everything and everyone around you.

AI for solving previously unsolvable problems or cutting solving time down for previously very long solution times, is a benefit. With the right information on the right problem, it is useful. What does it get used for? People writing resumes and speeches or cheating on tests, is that really what all that compute and man-hours are for? That's how it seems, because that's the extent of the average person's idea of "useful".

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein