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Another signal that prominent mentions of "AI" in your marketing sends is "this product is going to shoe-horn AI into this somehow". Plenty of products that peo
by smcl 4mo ago
Another signal that prominent mentions of "AI" in your marketing sends is "this product is going to shoe-horn AI into this somehow". Plenty of products that people use every day at home or in work - Google search, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Jira, and more - have had some kind of AI-first redesign. In each case some AI functionality has been placed prominently either somewhere that you accidentally press it or in place of something that previously worked. Even my iPhone brings up this brightly coloured keyboard expecting me to do something with AI, and I don't actually know what causes it.
So I think it's much simpler than solidarity with creators, artists or even workers more generally. It's that "AI" as a brand stinks, people are connecting it with annoying, low quality experiences and shitty low-effort art.
- jordanb 4mo agoI'm pissed off that Android took over the power button to activate their AI agent bullshit.
- stvltvs 4mo agoSearch your settings for Power Button, Side Button, or whatever. You should be able to change the setting for a long press.
- owebmaster 4mo agoChanging it back doesn't change the fact that it was changed for AI-maxxing
- nathan_compton 4mo agoI've recently switched to grapheneos. I have a high tolerance for shit not working, but its been fine.
- DANmode 4mo agoGoogle, not Android. I assure you, the Android Open Source Project made no such change.
- WorldMaker 4mo agoFeeling rather flippant, but what's the difference in practice? Can you point to an AOSP "brand" phone on a store shelf that is "de-Googled" out of the box? What is AOSP really for other than "open source washing" Google's ecosystem? Is it ever making standards that Google has to follow/comply with or is it always just the tail being wagged by the dog to make it look like the dog is happy about open source (but still isn't majority open source)?
- DANmode 4mo agoLineageOS, GrapheneOS et al base themselves upon this upstream project. A good one to familiarize yourself with, and support.
- WorldMaker 4mo agoAgain, let me know when you see a LineageOS or GrapheneOS phone for sale on a store shelf. I am certainly familiar with these things. I just don't see them having a practical effect on the average consumer, just fellow HN commenting nerds. I think I have one friend in real life with GrapheneOS at the moment, and it is not an experience they would recommend to any other friend of mine. I support such things in theory, sure, but in practice, especially in HN comments there seems to be a lot of forgiveness to the very locked in by Google Android ecosystem purely because these alternatives exist, ignoring the practical realities such as marketshare/mindshare/ease of use/ease of access. I don't have any easy answers on how to fix AOSP because it seems to be a sociopolitical problem, not a technical one, and I am mostly just complaining without skin in that particular game because I can't find myself caring about Android politics, but when my less technical friends and family that prefer Android are upset at something Google does I don't have good answers because "do months of research into LineageOS or GrapheneOS, deal with most of your apps not working most of the time, and it getting harder to buy phones because you have to make sure that they are rootable" isn't a good answer. "Why don't you just switch to an Apple device?" is at least an easier answer.
- DANmode 4mo ago
- stvltvs 4mo agoAnd frustrating automated voice systems, support chat bots that go in circles, etc.
- dmd 4mo ago>> It looks like this isn't something I can help you with. Would you like to be connected to a human who can help? > Sure! >> Ok, I'm connecting you to a human now. [5 minutes later] > Hello? >> Hi! What can I help you with? > Are you a human? >> No, I'm an AI agent programmed to help you with anything you need. What can I do for you? > You said you were going to connect me to a human. >> That isn't something I can do. What can I help you with? Turns out "connecting to a human" is something it knows about in its training data so it'll hallucinate doing so.
- dylan604 4mo agoAt least your example IDs itself as an AI agent. The ones I've come across hide it but it becomes obvious with responses like "I don't have access to that information" or something a human would never say. I had a dealership give me one of those, so I hung up on it and called a different dealership where I was connected to an actual human. Guess which one got my business...
- dv_dt 4mo agoSo AI is resurrecting the microsoft clippy problem
- dylan604 4mo agoClippy was just ahead of its time. Sadly for the bots of now, they are only slightly better than Clippy
- bigtex 4mo agoExample #1, Co-pilot in EVERY corner of Microsoft's software.
- queenkjuul 4mo ago> Plenty of products that people use every day at home or in work - Google search, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Jira, and more Most egregiously: VSCode. No, i absolutely never in my life will want Copilot to summarize anything for me and yet guess what button appeared in the UI and i accidentally clicked on last night....
- nativeit 4mo agoVSCodium was better on this front last time I tried it, and since Microsoft seems intent on allowing the Extensions to be a wildly insecure free-for-all, I am seeing fewer and fewer reasons to stick with the official version.
- MyHonestOpinon 4mo agoMy washing machine also has this AI icon. Not a big deal but it makes me roll my eyes everytime I see it.
- gilleain 4mo agoThat's actually a feature that washing machines have had for a while - "generative washing" - it is where the extra odd socks come from.
- jraph 4mo ago> extra odd socks I have the opposite issue, can generative washing recover the lost odd socks somehow?
- Angostura 4mo agoMy LG one has had smomething like that - a coupkle of years old. Seems quite nifty though - it tumbles the load dry for a while and alledgely uses the patterm of weight shift to determine what kind of load it is - the materials etc - and adjusts the wash accordingly
- dominotw 4mo agoi blame microslop for poisoning public perception with copilot. god that was so awful.
- Angostura 4mo agoI think AI has also become synonymous with slapdash, low effort, probably steals my data
- FeteCommuniste 4mo agoPrecisely. "We're doing this with AI" reads as "we don't care enough about this to pay a person to do it."
- doom2 4mo agoAnd why shouldn't it? There are so many prominent examples of badly implemented AI solutions. It's like how China is associated with cheap copycat products even though they are perfectly capable (and do!) produce many well made, quality things.
- fluoridation 4mo ago>In each case some AI functionality has been placed prominently either somewhere that you accidentally press it or in place of something that previously worked. Just the other day I was trying to fix someone's laptop and reflexively pressed (what I thought was) the context menu key, only to find no context menu opened, and instead a Copilot window right in the middle of the screen.