It is like the rug is pulled beneath our feet. When I was in college I could get a handle of what stuff is worth sharing and what isn’t. Now all of my data from before has become a liability.
Automating tedious tasks is great, as long as it's reliable. We know how to build reliable integrations and reliable automations. Making chat bots a page and click buttons it thinks will do the right thing is never gonna be reliable.
I wouldn't mind help with grocery orders. I like to check which apples are on special and maybe buy a different variety from normal depending on the price.
My grocery store makes this really tedious because they don't have a feature to sort by price per pound. So I have a stupid ritual where I ctrl-F "($0." and repeatedly ctrl-G to see all the apples under $1/pound. Then I do it again with ctrl-F "($1." to see the ones in the $1-$2/pound price range. And there are several other products with similar annoying processes.
If an AI could just do that for me, it would save me time. I don't actually think present-day AI would do it reliably enough, but the concept sounds fine.
My grocery store makes this really tedious because they don't have a feature to sort by price per pound. So I have a stupid ritual where I ctrl-F "($0." and repeatedly ctrl-G to see all the apples under $1/pound. Then I do it again with ctrl-F "($1." to see the ones in the $1-$2/pound price range. And there are several other products with similar annoying processes.
If an AI could just do that for me, it would save me time.
I just look at the flyers that come in the Sunday newspaper. Problem solved in under 30 seconds with near-zero effort.
Reminds me of the one-button Amazon magnets that you'd stick to the refrigerator.
Press the "Gatorade" button, and Gatorade shows up at the front door the next day. Except that it might cost you $2.49, or it might cost $12.88. There was no way of knowing beforehand.
(Those things were awesome tech, BTW. You'd program it with your phone via the equivalent of an acoustic modem.)
