Today, Avi Schiffmann launched Friend, a wearable, AI powered device that seems to have one job - cure loneliness.
And Twitter has gone into melt down, with many people outwardly hoping that this product fails and lots comparing it to a Black Mirror episode.
Years ago, I remember Marc Andreessen describing 'technology' as being a Greek translation meaning 'a better way of doing something'. I liked that. That was always the promise that I felt drawn too.
With enough technology and design and smart people, we could invent new solutions to old problems and improve people's lives - TECH WILL SAVE US.
I still think that that sort of work is possible and does happen. But we are also now in a time where 'a better way...' is redefined constantly.
Loneliness is a problem - sure. Talking to an Open AI wrapper is a solution, but it's not the kind of solution we should be funding, supporting, celebrating.
Writing, image making, photography, are all services we need, but making AI programs that do that for us, I would try and argue, isn't a better way of doing something.
I was working on a logo over the weekend, and it occurred to me how many hours I had spent crafting the letter forms. And how things get learned along the way that inform the overall work. Simply jumping to the end by copying everything that has gone before misses something. And it's hard to write about and describe but it's there and we all know it's there. Well some of us do.
Part of me wants to say that we (I) shouldn't be surprised. The technical, isolated, genius developers, living in the Bay Area Bubble, had got access to LLM's and Nvidia chips and all of a sudden want to solve:
1) Art
2) Friends
Things that I would hope many of us have less trouble with outside of those echo chambers.
But even if the problems are more ubiquitous, I would still try and make the case that these are not areas where we need to go sniffing with tech for solutions.
...
Years ago, there was a company that made some sort of pitch like "we're going to replace all the bodegas in NYC with a chain and get economies of scale and make them all similar and standardized!"
I can't find that article now, but they were chased out of the city. People just new it was wrong.
This feels like that.
Go solve some complex science problems where we truly need solutions. But if you're lonely, there are lots of ways to deal with that than replacing human connection (the best part of life) with a pendant and LLM around your neck.
