Technology

AI is a bad idea completely and if people cared at all about their privacy they should disable it.

It’s all well and good to say that AI categorises pictures and allows you to search for people and places in them, but how do you think that is accomplished? The AI scan and remembers every picture on your phone. Same with email summaries. It’s reading your emails too.

The ONLY assurance that this data isn’t being sent back to HQ is the companies word that it isn’t. And being closed source we have no possible way of auditing their use of data to see if that’s true.

Do you trust Apple and/or Google? Because you shouldn’t.

Especially now when setting up a new AI capable iPhone or iPad Apple Intelligence is enabled by DEFAULT.

It should be OPT-IN, not opt-out.

All AI can ever really do is invade your privacy and make humans even more stupid than they are already. Now they don’t even have to go to a search engine to look for things. They ask the AI and blindly believe what ever bullshit it regurgitates at them.

AI is dangerous on many levels because soon it will be deciding who gets hired for a new job, who gets seen first in the ER and who gets that heart transplant, and who dies.

I hate that nowadays AI == LLM/chatbot.

I love the AI classifiers that keep me safe from spam or that help me categorise pictures. I love the AI based translators that allow me to write in virtually any language almost like a real speaker.

What I hate is these super advanced stocastic parrots that manage to pass the Turing test and, so, people assume they think.

I am pretty sure that they asked specifically about LLM/chatbots the percentage of people not caring would be even higher

Well, as a user of both, I agree.

I think the article is missing the point on two levels.

First is the significance of this data, or rather lack of significance. The internet existed for 20-some years before the majority of people felt they had a use for it. AI is similarly in a finding-its-feet phase where we know it will change the world but haven't quite figured out the details. After a period of increased integration into our lives it will reach a tipping point where it gains wider usage, and we're already very close to that.

Also they are missing what I would consider the two main reasons people don't use it yet.

First, many people just don't know what to do with it (as was the case with the early internet). The knowledge/imagination/interface/tools aren't mature enough so it just seems like a lot of effort for minimal benefits. And if the people around you aren't using it, you probably don't feel the need.

Second reason is that the thought of it makes people uncomfortable or downright scared. Quite possibly with good reason. But even if it all works out well in the end, what we're looking at is something that will drive the pace of change beyond what human nature can easily deal with. That's already a problem in the modern world but we aint seen nothing yet. The future looks impossible to anticipate, and that's scary. Not engaging with AI is arguably just hiding your head in the sand, but maybe that beats contemplating an existential terror that you're powerless to stop.

Doesn't help that I don't know what this "AI" is supposed to be doing on my phone.
Touch up a few photos on my phone? Ok go ahead, ill turn it off when I want a pure photography experience (or use a DSLR).
Text prediction? Yeah why not.. I mean, is it the little things like that?
So it feels like either these companies dont know how to use "AI" or they dont know how to market it... or more likely they know one way to market it and the marketing department is driving the development. Im sure theres good uses but it seems like they dont want to put in the work and just give us useless ones.

Not just useless but actively unwelcome.

Everybody hates AI, and these companies keep trying to push it because they're so desperate for investors. Oh, I want to be a fly on the wall of a meeting room when the bubble finally pops.

please burst that bubble already so i can get a second hand server grade gpu

I have never used this bixbi AI

It actually made my Google speakers assistant dumber because I think they're trying to merge the 2

I side graded from a iPhone 12 to an Xperia as a toy to tinker around with recently and I disabled Gemini on my phone not long after it let me join the beta.

Everything seemed half baked. Not only were the awnsers meh and it felt like an invasion of privacy after reading to user agreement. Gemini can't even play a song on your phone, or get you directions home, what an absolute joke.

Do I use Gen AI extensively?…

No but, do I find it useful?…..

Also no.

My kids school just did a survey and part of it included questions about teaching technology with a big focus on the use of AI. My response was "No" full stop. They need to learn how to do traditional research first so that they can spot check the error ridden results generated by AI. Damn it school, get off the bandwagon.

"PLEASE use our hilariously power inefficient wrongness machine."

It is, for everybody mostly.

AI is not there to be useful for you. It is there to be useful for them. It is a perfect tool for capturing every last little thought you could have and direct to you perfectly on what they can sell you.

It's basically one big way to sell you shit. I promise we will follow the same path as most tech. It'll be useful for some stuff and in this case it's being heavily forced upon us whether we like it or not. Then it's usefulness will be slowly diminished as it's used more heavily to capitalize on your data, thoughts, writings, code, and learn how to suck every last dollar from you whether you're at work or at home.

It's why DeepSeek spent so little and works better. They literally were just focusing on the tech.

All these billions are not just being spent on hardware or better optimized software. They are being spent on finding the best ways to profit from these AI systems. It's why they're being pushed into everything.

You won't have a choice on whether you want to use it or not. It'll soon by the only way to interact with most systems even if it doesn't make sense.

Mark my words. When Google stops standard search on their home page and it's a fucking AI chat bot by default. We are not far off from that.

It's not meant to be useful for you.

I do not need it, and I hate how it's constantly forced upon me.

Current AI feels like the Metaverse. There's no demand for it or need for it, yet they're trying their damndest to shove it into anything and everything like it's a new miracle answer to every problem that doesn't exist yet.

And all I see it doing is making things worse. People use it to write essays in school; that just makes them dumber because they don't have to show they understand the topic they're writing. And considering AI doesn't exactly have a flawless record when it comes to accuracy, relying on it for anything is just not a good idea currently.

Students are currently one of the major benefactors of LLMs lol.

Am I crazy? I’ve got this thing writing code and listing website listings. I ask it certain things before Google and just have it give me the source. I use it to sum up huge documents to quickly analyze them before I go through them. Feels like how Google felt I when it first came out. Yall using the same ai?

(Apple ai is not what I’m talking about)

Not only that, but Google assistant is getting consistently less reliable. Like half the time now I ask it a question and it just does an image search or something or completely misunderstands me in some other manner. They deserted working, decent tech for unreliable, unwanted tech because ???

I planned to skip this generation, assuming this would be the year of useless ai cramming, even though my phone was getting old. Samsung was so desperate to sell s25s upgrading was essentially less than staying with my current model. Bought it, and turned all that mess off

Tbf most people have no clue how to use it nor even understand what "AI" even is.

I just taught my mom how to use circle to search and it's a real game changer for her. She can quickly lookup on-screen items (like plants shes reading about) from an image and the on-screen translation is incredible.

Also circle to search gets around link and text copy blocking giving you back the same freedoms you had on a PC.

Personally I'd never go back to a phone without circle to search - its so under-rated and a giant shift in smartphone capabilities.

Its very likely that we'll have full live screen reading assistants in the near future which can perform circle to search like functions and even visual modifications live. It's easy to dismiss this as a gimmick but there's a lot of incredible potential here especially for casual and older users.