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How to disable or avoid intrusive AI

librarian.net

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Re: How to disable or avoid intrusive AI

#71

Post by nancyminusone »

whatsThisBtn4 wrote: post #70
rad-b wrote: post #2

Such a cool guide to such a bizarre problem we live in… Companies forcing features that nobody wants, but that are also expensive to operate and cost real money to run? Market can definitely stay irrational for long.

No one wants? I understand normies on Facebook saying that, but you are on HN. How do you keep that position with the evidence getting thrown at you daily?

Do you use any of the AI features listed in the article, as shipped in the app? That's not the same thing as coding agents or cobbling together something for yourself.

Re: How to disable or avoid intrusive AI

#72

Post by yabones »

watwut wrote: post #47
stephantul wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My heart bleeds for Rovo’s product managers. They must also see that nobody actually wants or needs or even likes Rovo.

The cloud jira is such a downgrade overall. You cant have reasonable markdown or date format, but have AI "make longer" torture button. And deceiving "improve description" AI button which just ... makes it pointlessly longer.

Until 2023 I ran our on-prem Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, etc etc. I had an ancient 6c/6t box with about 24G of memory, and a couple 10K drives & 500G SSDs. It was fast, responsive, rock solid, and LDAP had everybody's accounts synced perfectly.

Then they strong-armed everybody but the largest enterprises onto their cloud. The alternative was painful (exporting/munging/importing to an alternative) so most of us went along for the ride. It took less than a year for them to start enshittifying their core product. Now it's basically unrecognizable from the product we used on-prem only three years ago.

I'll always be salty that my box of spare parts was superior to their cloud service in nearly every way.

Re: How to disable or avoid intrusive AI

#73

Post by totallymike »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #60
delecti wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I start my music and navigation route before leaving my garage, and any other interactions (volume up/down, skip song) are buttons on my steering wheel. What do I need voice input for? (I use Android Auto, but it's basically the same thing for these purposes)

Do people really use navigation apps often enough for this to be an issue?

Are you asking if people use apps to get directions? I don’t have data to back this up, but I’d guess that nav integration is one of the most popular features of CarPlay and Android Auto.

I depend on it for road trips, navigating to unfamiliar destinations, or even just sharing ETAs with people

Re: How to disable or avoid intrusive AI

#75

Post by JoshTriplett »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #60
delecti wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I start my music and navigation route before leaving my garage, and any other interactions (volume up/down, skip song) are buttons on my steering wheel. What do I need voice input for? (I use Android Auto, but it's basically the same thing for these purposes)

Do people really use navigation apps often enough for this to be an issue?

Yes, it's one of the most common usages of a phone in the car. And most people I know have exactly that workflow: find and set a navigation destination while parked, then drive there without interacting with the phone.

Re: How to disable or avoid intrusive AI

#76

Post by rockskon »

semiquaver wrote: post #21
dinkleberg wrote: post #9

I recently discovered that you need to have Siri enabled for Apple CarPlay. I expect we're going to see a lot of this where when you disable the AI functionality the devs won't have put in fallback states and you'll be effectively locked out. With CarPlay for instance there is no reason that I shouldn't be able to listen to my music or use the map without Siri. But things like responding to texts does rely on Siri, s…

Apple considers siri essential for CarPlay and I don’t really disagree. Don’t forget that a big part of the design of CarPlay tries to explicitly discourage tactile use while driving, with siri as the alternative input/output method.

Hard disagree. Checking the accelerometer to disable tactile functionality when moving would have been a more intelligent way to go about discouraging this behavior over mandating use of a historically unpopular technology (Siri) in order to use a popular one (Maps, Bluetooth music streaming).

This reeks of the metrics-gaming desperation that we've seen in Google, Amazon, and Microsoft as well.

Shoehorn unpopular technology to gatekeep popular technology. Either way the consumer's quality of life goes down.

Re: How to disable or avoid intrusive AI

#77

Post by jessamyn »

astudentinearth wrote: post #68

Much needed list. On the browser front, I recommend giving a try to alternatives like Zen or Helium, which are Firefox and Chromium based respectively. For AI buttons that specifically bug you, content blockers like uBlock Origin are especially helpful to zap them out of the page.

Thank you, I've added these browser suggestions.

Re: How to disable or avoid intrusive AI

#78

Post by jessamyn »

dceddia wrote: post #37

Recently bothered by the Amazon Alexa for Shopping thing that slides out constantly and can’t be turned off, I found this Chrome extension. https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/adios-alexa-for-sho...

Thank you, I've added this suggestion for Chrome/Firefox

Re: How to disable or avoid intrusive AI

#80

Post by Legend2440 »

skinfaxi wrote: post #27
Legend2440 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people do like AI tools and use them regularly. ChatGPT has nearly a billion weekly active users. It's just that another group of people absolutely hates the idea of AI and wants it to go away.

How many people prefer having an AI gate customer support, for instance? I don't think we are talking about two groups here.

I'm not opposed to it on principle, but it has to actually work.

Every AI phone assistant I've talked to has been pretty terrible, even compared to modern LLMs like ChatGPT voice mode.

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