Power to the People / Humans in the Loop
It's hard to find a job these days. Whenever I open up LinkedIn, my home feed is filled with the standard cookie-cutter LinkedIn posts. From the classic "we failed, here's what we learned from it" posts to the "here's why you need AI" and "announcing our new startup" posts, it all feels the same. The same things over and over again, with hundreds of reacts and comments, but with nothing real to show for… anything. And the worst part is… I didn't even ask to see these posts. Why does LinkedIn think I'm interested in them? How do I get off AI-LinkedIn?
As I've been filtering through the jobs list, I've noticed my results gradually steer away from AI roles and more towards creative ones. Good, I guess. However, most of the times when I see a promising role and click on the job, the company is AI-focused or otherwise does uninteresting work. Not so good.
Power to the People — the title of the reading. I write about LinkedIn because of the increasing number of startups founded by ambitious 18-22 year olds. The increasing number of GPT-wrappers, browser extensions, any prompt-based you-name-it. From what I see, these founders know how to build a product and market it well. But my question is: "who asked?" Why do we need yet another prompt-based AI tool? Where am I in all of this?
For prompt-based generative AI, the model only knows as much as the text you provide it. It gets better the more you talk to it, give it more detail, and provide feedback on its output. But it can never know you. I, as a complete whole, am not in the picture. Imagine if you met someone online, but they only texted back when you texted them, and never engaged with you otherwise. Would you consider them a friend, and more importantly, would you say that they actually know you?
From the article — "this theory suggests that people will invest time to improve their machine learners only if they view the task as more beneficial than costly or risky." I don't believe this to be true in the modern day. Not that I don't believe the theory, but I think that people building these machine learners aren't even weighing the costs, risks, and benefits. They are just doing.
Not sure where I'm going with this. So ending this by saying… if I have to live in a world with AI, I'd like to interact with it more than just a one-sided conversation. Maybe even as a friend… but that's a stretch.
Anyways… here's a list of 10 activities or tasks that could benefit from an interactive AI approach/mindset:
Busking — using interactive AI to aid or enable interaction with a busking show.
Escape Rooms — using interactive AI to enhance puzzles or provide unique interactions.
Christmas Decorating — incorporating interactive AI in Christmas decorations instead of just fancy lights.
Interior Design — incorporating interactive AI into interior design to allow for flexible and changing lighting/heating setups.
Game Lighting — like above, but lighting to create ambiance for gameplay. (https://csl.sony.fr/projects/funiki/)
Improvised cooking — cooking where an interactive AI suggests recipes based on what's on the kitchen counter.
Pet toys — Adaptive pet toy that changes functions based on the mood or type of pet.
Gamemaster — Interactive D&D AI gamemaster that generates and controls the story.
Photo shoots — interactive AI lighting that changes based on pose/mood/etc…
Video games — Interactive AI NPCs, just like in Kunwoo's game