VR Pioneer Jaron Lanier
October 3, 2000 11:20 PM Subscribe
VR Pioneer Jaron Lanier trashes AI and futurists and makes a case that software designers that engage in this groupthink produce user-unfriendly software.
This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- frimble
Who actually wants an AI interface? I hear Mr Jakob Nielsen talking about this all the time. When you've only given an ambiguous instruction AI usually means it will try and define what you want and do what it thinks is best from within the context. Better interface, yessum, AI is bad for anything but Aibo.
posted by holloway at 4:15 AM on October 4, 2000
posted by holloway at 4:15 AM on October 4, 2000
Why AI? I'll tell you -- because you're a freakin' moron who can't be trusted with computers, so they'll have to make the computer think for you. The computer is perfect, and YOU are so severely flawed you're lucky we let you even LOOK at a computer.
Well, OK, so nobody says it that way. But that's what's behind most (not all) of this AI-in-the-home thinking, IMHO. The basic logic is "users are stupid because they can't figure out my fabulous software, therefore I must make the software even MORE fabulous so that it can read their minds, and then I won't have to listen to them at all because my program will do it for me."
Or maybe I'm just cynical about commercial AI & NLP efforts. They all just seem so condescending....
In the New Regime, all consumer-market AI efforts will be preceded by at least one complete interface overhaul. If that fails, the UI designers will be executed, and only then will programmers be permitted to attempt AI and/or NLP.
posted by aramaic at 6:07 AM on October 4, 2000
Well, OK, so nobody says it that way. But that's what's behind most (not all) of this AI-in-the-home thinking, IMHO. The basic logic is "users are stupid because they can't figure out my fabulous software, therefore I must make the software even MORE fabulous so that it can read their minds, and then I won't have to listen to them at all because my program will do it for me."
Or maybe I'm just cynical about commercial AI & NLP efforts. They all just seem so condescending....
In the New Regime, all consumer-market AI efforts will be preceded by at least one complete interface overhaul. If that fails, the UI designers will be executed, and only then will programmers be permitted to attempt AI and/or NLP.
posted by aramaic at 6:07 AM on October 4, 2000
« Older Irritated? Problem fingers? | Facts, fiction, and half-truths. Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
He's certainly right about Word, each version seems to have more and more intrusive elements coded in and (more annoyingly) installed enabled, requiring you to spend an age disabling all the disk-hogging guff that comes with it.
Imagine all the productivity gains if business returned to buying the tool for the job instead of 'upgrades' which are actually just a few bug fixes and 5Meg of 'assistants' 'wizards' and other stuff that nearly everyone turns off straightaway
posted by Markb at 2:45 AM on October 4, 2000