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I can’t think of anything worse than letting AI run my life from my phone — here’s why
You can’t get away from AI anymore. That ship has firmly sailed, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to take photos, search the web or something entirely different, odds are AI is going to make itself known at some point.
Some people have embraced this change and go out of their way to take advantage of AI tools. I am not one of those people. Call me a luddite if you want, but I generally don’t feel comfortable with the idea of passing too much off to a machine if I can help it. Especially if it means letting that machine think, or make decisions for me.
And that means I’m not going anywhere near services like Samsung’s Now Brief, which seems to be built to eventually try and run my life for me.
AI hasn’t proven itself trustworthy enough for me
I’ve spoken at length about my general dissatisfaction with AI features that have been pushed front and center on our phones. I don’t mean the background processes, like computational photography or display upscaling, but the features that specifically have you interacting with the AI.
I don’t actually want to hand off tasks and responsibilities to those AIs. Not only do I prefer to do that work myself, and make an effort to find and do what I need, I don’t actually trust an AI to get things right.
Google’s AI Overviews is a great example of that in action. While Google supposedly did work to stop the feature from spewing out blatant misinformation after it first launched, the feature still screws up sometimes. I’ve seen examples of incorrect information both in person, and shared around the internet. I don’t know whether this is the same AI model that powers Google Gemini or not, but it’s enough to make me wary of taking what AI tells me for granted.
At least if I go searching for the information and pick up a dud source, that’s on me. Because I should know better than to just pick a single source and run with it regardless of what it says. Which is essentially how AI seems to do things — at least in my eyes.
And if I’m not trusting AI to find out something mundane, like when the supermarket closes for the day, then why on Earth would I trust it to take control of my life?
I don’t need someone to plan my routine for me
I am now 34 years old, so I’ve had plenty of time to get to grips with the whole “adult life” thing. To the point where my general routine hasn’t really changed since I got a dog 4 years back. Because I had to get up and be responsible, instead of sleeping all day like I used to.
Admittedly I don’t have a particularly strenuous daily routine. There’s no commute, so I don’t need to worry about potential traffic or how late my train will inevitably end up being. Add the fact that I currently don’t have kids, there aren’t that many logistical hurdles to have to worry about.
I say this because it means I don’t actually need a whole lot of help managing myself day-to-day. Not that I’d want AI help to get me through my day otherwise.
Now Brief in its current state isn’t really in a position for me to hand over my life and do everything for you, but with the launch of the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and One UI 8, it seems as though Samsung is doubling down on this idea — offering “more customized insights” in the new software.
I can see what Samsung is trying to do, but I’ll have to decline. I’ll ignore the fact that Now Brief is reliant on being hooked into Samsung’s smart architecture, which is something I have not done. It doesn’t really matter whether it would be Samsung, Google, Apple or someone else entirely. This is not for me.
I get they’re only suggestions, but I like to at least pretend that I have some modicum of control over my own life. Letting Now Brief, or some similar software feature, muscle its way into that process just chips away at what little agency I already have.
Plus, I don’t actually want to be generating all kinds of data for the AI algorithms to sort over. As silly as it seems, considering how much information I store on my Android phone already, I don’t feel comfortable handing over that intimate level of access to a faceless machine.
Bottom Line
AI may be attempting to integrate itself in every facet of our technological lives, but that doesn’t mean we have to let it if we don’t want that. While there are plenty of people out there who have taken advantage of AI tools to help them out in their daily lives, I don’t see much benefit in doing so. Not when I can do all that myself.
Maybe things will change as I get older, and as AI technology improves. But for now, I am quite happy to continue as I always have done and get by on my own.
It’s certainly not a perfect system, and the fact I arrived for a vet appointment this week only to find out I was 24 hours early is a perfect example of that. Maybe a little more AI support would have stopped that happening, or maybe it wouldn’t. At least it’s a mistake I made myself, mixing up how dates are supposed to work, and I can live with that.
