This reminds me of the ole days of cleaning up preinstalled Windows of bloatware. Some clean Linux distro on desktop is the only path open to human-first tech.
How to disable or avoid intrusive AI
191–200 of 222 posts
Re: How to disable or avoid intrusive AI
#192I 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…
Spotify on CarPlay is absolutely miserable because of this. No search, no album or artist pages, only “ask Siri”. I’m not even mad that there’s no keyboard, I will happily use voice dictation instead. Instead, what you get is essentially an “I’m feeling lucky” button that fails unless you want to listen to a specific playlist.
I agree it works terrible. If I say "I want hear album X from artist Y" it replies with "Here is 'This is Y' playlist", or worse "This is Z by D".
This is especially annoying if I drive with someone who requests music. Eventually, I always end up pulling up my phone at the stopping lights. Kind of makes me miss the Old Ways (CD player, or AUX in).
Re: How to disable or avoid intrusive AI
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
The response is to “it didn't occur to me that people might not remember how to get places in real life”, which is a rather limited understanding of why people might use navigation. I am not here to preach to you the benefits of this technology, simply clarifying an additional use case. There’s no need to conflate your own needs or tastes with the rest of the driving populace, either. Also, those notifications can li…
Most of the places I drive, there aren't really any practical alternative routes that don't add several hours and often things like a ferry journey to your trip. I don't want audio alerts for anything either. It's really simple - I don't want anything in the car that beeps, flashes, lights up, makes noise, or indeed does anything that is not directly part of making the car go in the required direction at the required…
I don't understand the mental process that leads to the pattern
"I don't understand why other people would do X"
"Well, it can be because of Y, Z, or W."
"But I don't do/need/want any of those"
"..."
It's like it's a fundamental failure to understand that other minds are separate from yours and have different motives and preferences.
Re: How to disable or avoid intrusive AI
#194Such 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.
we’ve reached the stage of market consolidation where corporations dictate consumer behavior, not vice versa
Been there for a long time. A lot of stuff, especially tech, is not bought because of an existing need, but because marketing made you want it.
Re: How to disable or avoid intrusive AI
#195Oh! The joy of driving a 2010 car with 60,000 miles on it knowing it's more likely than not I've never have to experience CarPlay/Siri/etc.
Worst my external navigator does is ask me to update maps some times. Rest of the time it stays away from my way...
Re: How to disable or avoid intrusive AI
#196Such 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.
I really do wonder if the market is being irrational or if we just cannot see what they are I suspect that many people dislike AI but are begrudgingly using it. I would put money very few people are completely avoiding it. It's very hard to avoid now anyways. Maybe the AI company strategy is really just "make it so invasive in life it's so difficult to avoid and expensive enough to revert that companies and governmen…
Choosing to visit (or use the app) ChatGPT or Claude is very different from having terribly integrated and usually useless AI in every single app and website.
Re: How to disable or avoid intrusive AI
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Prove that they do want them, then. If I personally wanted to use generative AI, I’d query an agent app on my computer or load ChatGPT in a browser. I wouldn’t want my email client proactively spewing random words into the text area on its own. And I certainly don’t want every bit of information on my screen continuously streamed to a corporate cloud server so that I can ultimately be profiled and surveilled.
> Prove that they do want them, then. Look at OpenAI revenue just over a year ago. Most of that was not for LLM coding. Loads of non-technical people I know are paid subscribers $20/mo to ChatGPT (not API, but their actual chat product).
That's beside the point. It is obvious that this discussion is about idiotic AI integrations plastered to every website and application, not about choosing to use ChatGPT or Claude on your own terms.
Re: How to disable or avoid intrusive AI
#198Such 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.
Well this is why, as an enthusiastic AI user, even I usually want to disable intrusive AI!
If it's popping up in some random product I don't pay for I can only assume it's such a shitty model that it's probably not worth talking to.
(Exception: my bank has replaced its shitty phone tree with an AI chatbot. This is faster and the model has a "transfer to a human" tool. It's perfectly capable of following its playbook, determining that I need a human, and putting me in touch with one. So actually I started with "now I've gotta debase myself by talking to a fucking 32B Chinese LLM" but ended with "oh that was great actually").
Re: How to disable or avoid intrusive AI
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because the traffic isn't known to you but it is to Google. I could take two routes, one is faster depending on circumstances, and Google knows those circumstances.
Is it really faster though? All you have now is two routes with a roughly equal amount of traffic on. One of those routes will be a massive detour.
Unfortunately, accidents are quasi commonplace among my commute.
Re: How to disable or avoid intrusive AI
#200Such 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.
Nobody wants = nobody on bluesky. I don't get this crusade mentality. The bigger problem with these apps is that they are proprietary and they have been spying on us.
I’m not saying nobody wants to use AI, or AI coding and desktop apps. I’m using that daily as many others here are too.
The article refers to different AI features within other apps (e.g. search overviews in google, summarize email, summarize message) that bring no benefit to the user but only clutter.
I think everyone is fine with using their AI of choice to do their tasks of choice. It’s when I see a button that obstructs my workflow prompting me to do something I don’t need to with a shitty model that’s not good at it.