Big tech senior software engineer working on a major AI product speaking:
I totally agree with the message in the original post.
Yes, AI is going to be everywhere, and it's going to create amazing value and serious challenges, but it's essential to make it optional.
This is not only for the sake of users' freedom. This is essential for companies creating products.
This is minority report, until it is not.
AI has many modes of failure, exploitability, and unpredictability. Some are known and many are not. We have fixes for some, and band aids for some other, but many are not even known yet.
It is essential to make AI optional, to have a "dumb" alternative to everything delegated to a Gen AI.
These options should be given to users, but also, and maybe even more importantly, be baked into the product as an actively maintained and tested plan-b.
The general trend of cost cutting will not be aligned with this. Many products will remove, intentionally or not, the non-ai paths, and when the AI fails (not if), they regret this decision.
This is not a criticisms of AI or a shift in trends toward it, it's a warning for anyone who does not take seriously, the fundamental unpredictability of generative AI
I totally agree with the message in the original post. Yes, AI is going to be everywhere, and it's going to create amazing value and serious challenges, but it's essential to make it optional.
This is not only for the sake of users' freedom. This is essential for companies creating products.
This is minority report, until it is not.
AI has many modes of failure, exploitability, and unpredictability. Some are known and many are not. We have fixes for some, and band aids for some other, but many are not even known yet.
It is essential to make AI optional, to have a "dumb" alternative to everything delegated to a Gen AI.
These options should be given to users, but also, and maybe even more importantly, be baked into the product as an actively maintained and tested plan-b.
The general trend of cost cutting will not be aligned with this. Many products will remove, intentionally or not, the non-ai paths, and when the AI fails (not if), they regret this decision.
This is not a criticisms of AI or a shift in trends toward it, it's a warning for anyone who does not take seriously, the fundamental unpredictability of generative AI