It struck me the other day that this is the future that the industry focus on AI is driving us towards - software that knows better than you do, whether you lik

It struck me the other day that this is the future that the industry focus on AI is driving us towards - software that knows better than you do, whether you like it or not. In much the same way that the capabilities and usage of today's technologies baffles people who didn't grow up with it, tomorrow all of us will be baffled by the number and magnitude of decisions that the average piece of software assumes its users will delegate to it, and the fact that no one will really be able to debug or diagnose exactly why it made the decisions it did. Zawinski's Law [1] will be modified to read "Every program attempts to expand until it can act as a personal assistant. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can." [1] http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html