Tech companies and false promises

Day 142 / 366

I saw 2 pieces of AI news today that I have mixed feelings about. One was that Nothing has now made their earphones ChatGPT enabled. The second was that Microsoft is working on a “Photographic Memory” feature for Windows that will remember everything you are doing by taking regular screenshots and feeding them to an AI model.

All these new features are sold to us as if they are being made for our own benefit. They will make our lives so much easier right? But if you look back at how tech has evolved, you know that these are all lies. Every such innovation that is marketed as being for the user is actually for the benefit of these for-profit companies.

For instance, they took away our headphone jacks. The reason given was that Bluetooth earphones are so much better for us. Not only are Bluetooth earphones worse in audio quality then wired ones, they are much less convenient as well. We now have to worry about the batteries of our earphones running out.

The same goes for OTT. They were sold to us as subscriptions based ad-free platforms where you can legally get all the shows and movies that you want. Now there are about a dozen OTT services, and many of them have started showing ads and making some movies Rent-only.

Which is why I don’t think AI would ever be for our benefit. Once AI gets into all aspects of our lives the companies would find a way to then make our lives worse and their pockets deeper.