What Do We Want Computers to Do?
It seems like only yesterday Apple was crushed under the weight of criticism for its tasteless ad destroying creative instruments into a thin iPad. I thought that may have given Apple some insight into how artists use their products to supplement the creative process rather than replace it.
But here we are, watching Apple unashamedly introduced “AI” features at WWDC that write bedtime stories for you and generate images for your school notes on architecture. They’re handing off requests from Siri to OpenAI when they want ChatGPT’s “expertise,” a word they actually used in the presentation and twice in their press release.
My friend Pat remarked how outsourcing the creation of a bedtime story for your child is just bad parenting. While I don’t have kids myself, I absolutely agree. It’s not just your job to be creative, inventive, and silly with your child. It’s a chance to do a little improv and giggle about your cleverness together. A bedtime story is a moment for you to bond with each other. If you look to “AI” to do this for you, what you get is simply not human. It’s definitely not you. It may sound crass, but you’ve hired a robot nanny because you can’t be bothered. You’ve admitted—very casually—that actually, you just want your kid to shut the fuck up and go to sleep.
You may have asked or heard others asking how this differs from other computing tools that help us accomplish tasks. Let me break down what computers can do for us.
