We’re so thoroughly fucked. So glad I’ll be gone by the time it ruins everything.
Muse has been downloaded 9 million times in the U.S. and Canada since its launch on September 8, market intelligence company AppMagic, told Rest of World.
I don’t even want to know where they got this figure. Downloads are not the same as users. I would imagine a third is tech influencers and journalists who played with it for a hot minute, produced their piece on it, and uninstalled. The figure is immediately less impressive, isn’t it.
The question of “Western” values over local ones in developing countries is valid. While I would assume the models will be able to learn, I also think the users there will quickly realise that this stuff doesn’t work and stop using it. A similar thing will happen in areas of sketchy internet coverage. People will just not use this crap. And that the vegetable stall on the street market is going to implement an inventory system and publish an agent-friendly website so they can be part of this magnificent technology sounds very unlikely to me. Payment systems, okay. If you can do that on a phone connection. But this much complication? In the PRC in a big city maybe, Burkina Faso maybe not so much.
The agent apocalypse won’t be as bad, I don’t think. There will be plenty of stories of how the Meta agent rather than booking a 10:30am ordered a military drone strike on the nail salon by mistake or something.
The languages are a thing. Even in developed nations like Switzerland or Belgium there are challenges that the “American Intelligence” people have probably not thought about. Brussels is good example where dual infrastructure for Flemish and French speakers exist and really 2.1 language groups live separately and together at the same time. The .1 is all the EU and NATO foreigners in the city plus the odd Belgian German speaker. Booking an appointment at a doctor that doesn’t speak your language through your clever agent isn’t helpful.
Brussels is good example where dual infrastructure for Flemish and French speakers exist and really 2.1 language groups live separately and together at the same time.
Not to mention a lot of local dialects that as far as I’ve tried fail with digital systems. You got to speak to those systems like it’s the king in the most cleaned up language you’ve got to avoid mistakes. Or just don’t bother after trying once.
Silicon Valley looked at places where reliable internet, affordable data, and local language support are still luxuries and thought: what if we added a $100/month bot that needs five times the bandwidth to buy tomatoes? That’s not closing the digital divide. That’s putting a toll booth on it and calling it progress.
