It feels like, within the past few months, there has been a fairly dramatic shift in what’s making a splash in AI. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Up until recently, it seemed like everyone had an AI announcement of some kind. And the community gave much of it either a pass or a thumbs up. AI for everyone!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But what’s moving the community is no longer AI making it into yet another application: increasingly, even the pro-AI crowd is starting to call out the slop, or the exaggerations of Sam Altman and Co. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m not saying these AI announcements are worthless: many of them fall under the category of “good enough” AI. Think of the early Google AI search summaries. In 9 out of 10 cases, it was providing a generally acceptable response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Throw an “AI can make mistakes” on it and call it a day. But even if Gemini is getting it right almost every time, when it didn’t, it was embarrassingly bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not picking on Gemini, but even the incredibly successful Nano Banana image and video model falls under “good enough.” Yes, it creates stunning imagery and videos, but each is its own creation: you can’t easily expand upon a character or scene you liked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next time you create it, it will look different. Great for short form, but not much else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Good enough AI is also why even those of us who aren’t completely drinking the Kool Aid have a hard time convincing people that their concepts of AI’s capabilities are extremely dated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With so much half-baked and useless AI floating around, you can’t blame them. Most folks’ experiences with the technology are not<\/em> positive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My 67-year-old mother is a perfect example. She’s not a Luddite: the woman has had an iPhone since I handed down my original iPhone 15 years ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But she hates IVRs, especially the ones that tell you to say what you want. The last experience got her so heated she literally said, I want to talk to somebody that ACTUALLY BREATHES!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n (I was in my office finishing up a Ben task, so the irony of working on my own AI customer service agent while my mother was struggling with another was not lost.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Add to this the absolute lack of any moderation across services like Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram these days, where crappy AI-generated video after video is pushing out real content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These observations and experiences have informed my decisions when it comes to Hal and Ben. I want people to walk away from their experiences impressed, not frustrated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If we’re going to change people’s minds about AI, we need to stop building half-baked projects. “AI can make mistakes” is now a cop-out. <\/em>There are plenty of ways to all but guarantee a correct answer. Take the time to ensure it’s not hallucinating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ask, does AI really<\/em> belong here? Focus on the interaction<\/em>. That’s what makes AI different from any previous computer-human interface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That interaction must be the focus now. AI development has focused, as it should, on making AI more accurate. Now we need to work on making it more interactive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To me, the quality of interaction is the key differentiator between good and merely good enough AI. And that interaction isn’t just the way the AI communicates with the user. It’s also how it listens and acts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Up until recently, it seemed like everyone had an AI announcement of some kind. And the community gave much of it either a pass or a thumbs up. AI for everyone!<\/p>\n But what’s moving the community is no longer AI making it into yet another application.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[16,23],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinions","tag-llms","tag-ui-ux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/halspeaks.cirruslyweather.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/halspeaks.cirruslyweather.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/halspeaks.cirruslyweather.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halspeaks.cirruslyweather.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halspeaks.cirruslyweather.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/halspeaks.cirruslyweather.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/halspeaks.cirruslyweather.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halspeaks.cirruslyweather.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halspeaks.cirruslyweather.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}