TheGoogle I / O 2024keynote was AI - heavy . VeryAI - heavy . We all knew it would be , but I went into it hoping the often - exciting ship’s company would show me what I really require : AI with personality . Alas , once again , the AI on show all did a variation of the same old things , with utterly no sport , excitement , or joy in it at all .
This was absolutely when Google needed to roll out its very own interlingual rendition of R2 - D2 at I / group O to fire up our imaginations about AI , given theoverload about itrecently . But what we catch rather was the computer fromStar Trek , and oh , how humdrum and uninspiring it was .
Google’s AI life is not my life
Google ’s Gemini AI reach list , helps with steganography , searches , summarizes , and orchestrate . It can create spreadsheets from receipts I ’ve been emailed and can produce an entirely - too - exact schedule for a vacation . I can give it access to PDFs and it will search and excuse them , and it can use spreadsheets to show profits from the “ side bunco game ” I do n’t have or desire . hunting , inquiry , condense , clarify , plan , explicate , insight , repeat . That ’s Google ’s AI , and what ’s worse is there ’s not one dick for doing this , there aredozens .
Google expend more than 90 minutes excuse these apparently superposable tools using slenderly different lyric and slightly dissimilar good example to attempt to put one over us that we were ensure something young each metre . Sure , there were a few creative examples , plus some sad , unfunny AI nonsense about pic of cats playing guitars . But underneath it was still all the same feature at work , doing essentially the same thing . I could n’t start to tell you the departure between any of them or imagine when I ’d use them , as there are only so many time I need to organize something in such minute detail and in two-fold quick fourth dimension .
Search , research , condense , clarify , plan , explain , brainstorm , repeat .
Worse , the examples had the dire whiff of shampoo commercials about them . They show aspirational lifestyles that are detached from my own , and because all the lineament being excuse are fundamentally the same and a bit boring , I can never guess myself in the situation because it ’s such a stretch . Google want me to picture using its AI shampoo , so I ’ll on the spur of the moment cry out for an AI supporter to organize my ( notional ) holiday or to work out those massive profits from that second job I ’ll suddenly have time to take on . But it ’s unacceptable to get from point A to channelize B because , behind it , the AI portrayed is alone soulless — devoid of personality and shockingly dull .
Clever but boring
What Google is achieving with Gemini is amazing , and what it can do is undoubtedly telling , but where is the AI with personality ? Where is the AI that Iwantto usage , that I do it interacting with , and that wants to talk to me ? only , where is Google ’s R2 - D2 ? The most well - knownand pop droidfrom the Star Wars universe obtain a lot of poppycock done , but it ’s also Luke Skywalker ’s confide acquaintance and fellow traveler . If R2 ’s not projecting video messages or hack Imperial computer , it ’s snap a joke , being heroic , or just plainemoting . R2 - D2 is a ( fabricated I know , I ’m not lead on here ) golem and presumably uses some kind of AI , but it still has personality . Why ca n’t Google ’s AI be this much merriment ?
It ’s all I could cerebrate about when Gemini was show busily searching a Gmail account for the umpteenth time . Admittedly Google ’s DeepmindProject Astradoes look bully , with the fast , conversational AI chatbot demonstrated appearing playfulness to use . It was interesting to pick up that achieving this level of ready interaction is hard , but once again , there was a lot of show - and - William Tell from the AI going on in the demo , and I ca n’t put myself in a berth where I ’d ever do this more than a few times in real life sentence . You really take to show me why I should care about all this , Google .
Why ? Because I like about R2 - D2 and I do n’t worry about Gemini , and that ’s the job . Perhaps I ’m alone here , and everyone else wants an organisational pecker and not an AI companion , but I conceive Google and other firms pushing AI postulate a sport , interactive , engaging while of computer hardware to go along with all the logistical and administrative boredom .
It will aid play AI alive and show how transformational it could be in a genuinely futuristic , sci - fi way . I do n’t spend all my waking hours wanting to get things done , Google , and that ’s why your AI tire me .
Where is the great AI hardware?
It ’s not just Google struggling with this concept . Hardware with AI at its effect has hit the headlines a stack recently , with theHumane AI Pinand theRabbit R1being the most interesting and wide discuss . I very quickly learned the Humane AI Pin was never going to be my artificially intelligent friend , asit is far too serious for such frivolity , but the Rabbit R1 ’s fun ironware and cute logo gave me desire it would have sufficient personality to engage me .
But before AI became as knock-down as it is now , society were out there making the right hardware , just not quite with the right software tidings . My personal favourite is the amazingGateboxwith its cute , customizable avatar that would greet , chat , and pursue with you and even transport messages to your phone during the day that would prompt a simple conversation . I was also excited aboutNeon ’s artificial humansat CES 2020 before they disappear without a tracing andBuddy the house robotback in 2018 , and it ’s why apps likeNomi , Xiaoice , and Replikaare so tempting .
Personality goes a long way
Google could make a brilliant version of the Rabbit R1 , its own Gatebox - flair gimmick , or with its deep air pocket , any form of home golem it liked — but it chooses not to . It ’s so frustrating to see the party that bring us futurist and fun hardware like Google Glass be so caught up in productiveness , efficiency , and effort to keep us meddling and working . In doing so , it ’s squandering a chance to make what is the most radical package innovation we ’ve ever seenactually electrifying , which is a crazy instruction on its own .
I want AI that ’s more than a dick . I require an AI friend that gets things done , a comrade for when I ’m bored or lonely , and to see the type of sci - fi hardware that shape my childhood become realness using this astounding technology . I ’m sure it ’s very difficult , but there are examples in world that do close to that dreaming already , so why must Google choose only the most soulless , standardised example to show it off all the sentence ?
At the remainder of the keynote , Google CEO Sundar Pichai gleefully order the phrase AI was used more than 120 times throughout the presentment and that , of course of instruction , it used AI to keep reckoning . I get it on it was supposed to be a knowing in - joke , but it was also a painful admonisher that despite so many mentions , very little about what was tell around it was actually memorable . It hammer home that , at the moment , AI really is just another vapid tool and a depressingly waste opportunity .
