"The 'Whisperverse': The future of mobile computing is an AI voice inside your head."
I wasn't going to share this but then the Harvard students' video (below) came out, and I felt like the two go together somehow, so here you go.
"Within the next few years, an AI assistant will take up residence inside your head. It will do this by whispering guidance into your ears as you go about your daily routine, reminding you to pick up your dry cleaning as you walk down the street, helping you find your parked car in a stadium lot, and prompting you with the name of a coworker you pass in the hall. It may even coach you as you converse with friends and coworkers, giving you interesting things to say that make you seem smarter, funnier, and more charming than you are. These will feel like superpowers."
This is making me think of that famous quote from Douglas Adams:
"Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things." -- Douglas Adams
I'm 54 and didn't get the "against the natural order of things" itch at age 35, but... I find myself slipping into that "against the natural order of things" feeling on this one. Do I really want an "AI assistant" taking up residence in my head? The idea doesn't actually seem appealing.
"Most of these devices will be deployed as AI-powered glasses because they give the best vantage point for cameras to monitor our field of view, though camera-enabled earbuds will be available too. The other benefit of glasses is that they can be enhanced to display visual content, enabling the AI to provide silent assistance as text, images, and realistic immersive elements that are integrated spatially into our world."
Oh, right, that's why Google Glass did so well -- oh wait, it failed. Maybe it was just ahead of its time? And this time the idea will work?
"Whatever we call this technology, it is coming soon and will mediate all aspects of our lives, assisting us at work, at school, or even when grabbing a late-night snack in the privacy of our own kitchen."
This is like how they told us Twitter was for telling the world what you ate for lunch, and it actually turned out to be for fighting about politics. Now they tell us we'll have AI assistants taking up residence in our heads for assisting us with our late-night snacks, but it'll actually turn out to be for fighting about politics. (Don't ask me how. But the purpose of most technology always ends up being fighting about politics.)
