Get out of the driver's seat

[UltraBudgie]

... AI assistants are taking the wheel. Sure, Microsoft is calling their AI Assistant "Copilot", but it really going to be the pilot, taking control of the craft and navigating your online journey for you. Google's at it, too:

Google is reportedly gearing up to introduce its interpretation of the large action model concept known as “Project Jarvis,” with a preview potentially arriving as soon as December, according to The Information. This project aims to streamline various tasks for users, including research gathering, product purchasing, and flight booking.

Sources familiar with the initiative indicate that Jarvis will operate through a future version of Google’s Gemini technology and is specifically optimized for use with the Chrome web browser.

The primary focus of Project Jarvis is to help users automate everyday web-based tasks. The tool is designed to take and interpret screenshots, allowing it to interact with web pages by clicking buttons or entering text on behalf of users. While in its current state, Jarvis reportedly takes a few seconds to execute each action, the goal is to enhance user efficiency by handling routine online activities more seamlessly.

https://www.theartistree.fm/journal/4102...ctivities/

Here's how it will go. Websites for online shopping, flight booking, research, even email will all continue to become more and more difficult to use and enshittified. Dark patterns will continue to proliferate to the point where it is a constant battle just to get anything to actually work. This is by design. The solution we are given -- hooray! -- is online digital assistants. They'll take the wheel, make everything easy again. Sure, they're centrally controlled by big tech, operating on mysterious "alignment" and rules that no one has access to; they're a black box. But, they'll solve the problem! They will be able to cut through the tangle. It will be great! At first, anyway. Then, the user experience will subtly start changing, year by year, like Google search did...

It's a new paradigm, a new age of control freedom!

[Maxmars]

Middlemen... fah!

Google and Microsoft both are hard at work making users a "passive" element in online services... just a revenue source to be exploited. 

The middlemen will tell us what to access, what to see, what to hear... all the while 'telling' us what to think about it... be telling us what 'everyone' thinks about it... and it's all 'entertainment' so lies are fair game. 

And even when they are called out... they can hide behind "AI" and "algorithms" making it all "no one's fault."

[UltraBudgie]

Middlemen... fah!

Google and Microsoft both are hard at work making users a "passive" element in online services... just a revenue source to be exploited. 

The middlemen will tell us what to access, what to see, what to hear... all the while 'telling' us what to think about it... be telling us what 'everyone' thinks about it... and it's all 'entertainment' so lies are fair game. 

And even when they are called out... they can hide behind "AI" and "algorithms" making it all "no one's fault."

And the market forces are in place to make it spiral. Imagine you have a website selling stuff. Well, to increase sales, you'll want to make a deal with google, so their AI assistant knows when to recommend your product as an option. They also have enough data to know exactly how much each customer might be willing to pay, which options to highlight to them to best get their attention, etc. All they ask is a small percentage. No problem! Sales boom. But, some people are still using the old webpage portal, with fixed pricing! Well, I guess we don't really need to make that easy to use any more, eh? Let's put a link in there to "Log in with Google". Hide things behind their wrapper, guide them to a "unified shopping experience". Gradually, the enshittification takes over, and everyone gives up trying to use things directly. Then those options disappear entirely. See how it'll go? It awesome, in the old sense of the word that means "awful".

One of the few ways to protest other than personal boycott is social shaming. Recently, when people use Siri to answer questions, or Google voice assist or whatever, I will sometimes laugh in their face -- "ha! you actually use that crap?" It does not make me very popular. But then again that has never really been a risk for me, and it does occasionally give opportunity to explain myself. Sadly, people seem to respond to the social pressure of someone laughing at their stupidity much more than reasoned argument.