Lately, I’ve noticed AI (Artificial Intelligence) turning up in all kinds of places unannounced. For example, sometimes as I’m going about my day, my phone’s AI will randomly start answering something. Or looking something up. It’s called Gemini and I still haven’t figured out how to delete it. I feel like that’s not even possible. Gemini, it seems, is here to stay.
Every time I do an internet search, some AI-generated “overview” is the first thing to show up. I sometimes find this even more dubious and suspect than scrolling through regular results. First of all, I have no idea where the “overview” pulled the content. It could have been from random reddit-chats, poorly constructed web pages, rampant bot-generated disinformation, and something legit. There’s no way to know. At least scrolling through results provides me with the option to see the source. Or to review the information in its original context. The AI-overview likely mixes little bits of information from lots of different places.
What feels crummy about the whole situation is I didn’t ask for the “convenience” of AI to help me on my phone or with searching. It was just there one day. When Gemini appeared on my phone, it was automatically the new default. I use Google-assist when I’m driving and need to do something hands-free. However, I never use it during other times. I thought it was shut off. Then one day, while having a conversation, Gemini started looking up some stuff related to what I was saying. It felt creepy, intrusive, and not helpful at all. In fact, I had to spend a lot of time searching for non-AI generated responses to find out how to disable the feature. Even now, it will still occasionally show up, despite my efforts to turn it off in settings.
When I think of all the amazing ways that AI can be helpful, it’s not in these overt and unwanted ways. Rather, I imagine AI taking care of mundane, time consuming, and repetitive tasks. Or using it’s huge power to do useful things such as blur my image from photos that others take and may post publicly. Mostly, I think about having a choice about whether or not I want to use AI on my personal devices. Making it the default automatic option feels intrusive to me.
As you can see, my finished plate was definitely “Worth the Wait.”
