ChatGPT is what Siri should have been when released.
That wasn't possible back when Siri was released. Speaking candidly, I'm happy that Apple is a little behind in this space. ChatGPT is in its infancy and already everyone is touting it as a success and creating product integration without any consideration for the end user. This has implications for privacy and security and a major miss with this type of integration coupled with AI's new ability to sift large data sets heuristically could mean major problems.
So you have an integrated AI assistant in your OS. It ties into your email client. It ties into your office suite. It ties into your Online storage drive where every tech company from MS, to Apple, to Google has been pushing people to save files for years. The AI now cuts through large data sets quickly. In the past, a hacker had to gain access to your system and had to be able to download everything before security protocols cut their access. Things stored solely on the cloud required a hacker to break into iCloud, OneDrive, etc.
Now a hacker just needs to find an AI exploit and point it to a secure IP address where it can phone home to and voila, targeted end user hacking with a much higher degree of relevancy. I order your AI to look for personally identifying information I can use to steal your credit, your home mortgage, etc. and your integrated AI goes into every app, your online data storage, and uses its model to find the most relevant information about you. It then streamlines that information into a compressed package, points it at an IP address somewhere, and your information is sent. It might even be used to help cover its own tracks and clean-up behind itself.
Not to mention what this thing learns about you while it's being nosy. And who knows if we can turn it off or on or have actual privacy. I'm going to have to delete my SnapChat account because I won't pay $3 a month for Snap to turn of My AI that the company forces on you. You can't type "My" or "AI.." without it popping up, ready to annoy you. You can't search in Windows 11 without Bing and ChatGPT popping up at the top trying to butt in. You have to create a registry edit to kill web search from Start just to get this to go away. I'm more than happy to use ChatGPT or AI to do things when I download the separate, standalone app, or go to the website and invoke its assisance deliberately. I'd like to have the option to not have to interact with these AI bots automacally and by default. I am an IT service desk specialist. I have tons of computing devices and I love tech. I'm no ludite. But I understand there is a place for tech to improve our lives and a place where tech has the potential to make things far worse. We are more connected to instant information than at any time in the history of man, but we aren't smarter. Social media makes the workd always connected and smaller than ever before, and we aren't more sociall. We aren't more well mannered, we aren't more empathetic, and we aren't more kind and understanding. In many ways we've regressed. I think it's highly likely that AI assistants will make the lazy and stupid less inclided to learn and to the work themseles; a detriment to their own future. I think AI integration will make it really easy for the greedy corporatists to find ways to eliminate jobs that people will desperately need in the short to midterm.
It amazes me that we have people who are quick to hop on the exciting new toy bandwagon everytime something shiny and new pops up, but there is no thoughts given at all the what the implications are. The same people pushing for AI integration into all applications and PCs are similarly the same people who are all in on EVs and cars that have the drive train, emissions, and safety/collision systems connected always to the internet for OTA updates. They then get angry that their heated seats are turned off or their battery life has been crippled. But they fail to understand that their vehicle is another surface from online attack where their life can be in danger because they want the factory to push cool new dashboard layouts to their shiny iPhone on wheels.
In my jobs I see people who call because their headset doesn't work. They plugged it in and when it fell to the floor they picked up a random one sitting on their desk and they are puzzled it doesn't work. I get calls from people who daisy chain their displays together when they set up their company provided PC and then don't know why they don't work. I get calls from people who delete the authenticator app from their phone because "they aren't using it" but then they get upset that they have to start from scratch to reset their device password because of modern 2FA needs. People don't understand tech. I don't just mean octagenarians. I mean people, generally. And we want to hook them in to AIs? Something far and above what they can even comprehend and then turn them loose onto the world?
Whatever your opinion of Elon Musk is, I think in this regard he is correct. We need to study AI. We need to do far more testing of it. And we need to use it carefully and judiciously with great prejudice and with very little integration into our digital life as possible until it can be fully constrained.
