We don’t notice technologies that quietly solve the problem they were intended to solve. I’ve never seen a rage post about light switches. Or wrenches. Or locks. Or pencils.
AI, and a lot of the technologies we complain about, are business models that prioritize value to the producer over value to the buyer or user. They aren’t technology per se, so much as a shoddy product wrapped in unrealistic promises.
And when they quietly solve a problem, we often expand their use until they start creating new problems. The automobile solved the problem of horses in cities (which were yes, a really terrible thing, between their excrement, their smell, the bodies of the ones driven to death, just horrible). But then we re-designed our whole metro-areas to put people at least 10km away from workplaces, groceries and services. The sprawl made the car necessary for parts of life that were never serviced by horses, and then you have terrible traffic and all the downsides that come with it. My point? The car did actually quietly solve a problem quite elegantly at first.
We don’t notice technologies that quietly solve the problem they were intended to solve. I’ve never seen a rage post about light switches. Or wrenches. Or locks. Or pencils.
AI, and a lot of the technologies we complain about, are business models that prioritize value to the producer over value to the buyer or user. They aren’t technology per se, so much as a shoddy product wrapped in unrealistic promises.
And when they quietly solve a problem, we often expand their use until they start creating new problems. The automobile solved the problem of horses in cities (which were yes, a really terrible thing, between their excrement, their smell, the bodies of the ones driven to death, just horrible). But then we re-designed our whole metro-areas to put people at least 10km away from workplaces, groceries and services. The sprawl made the car necessary for parts of life that were never serviced by horses, and then you have terrible traffic and all the downsides that come with it. My point? The car did actually quietly solve a problem quite elegantly at first.