Enshittification has really ruined the promise of every new technology. Sure, I believe there's _potential_ for something cool in AI. But all of that potential is overridden by the rent-seeking profit interests of companies that want to carve out a monopoly position in a space and extract the maximum value forever.
> Imagine that you want to plan a trip. A travel bot will identify hotels that fit your budget. An agent will know what time of year you’ll be traveling and, based on its knowledge about whether you always try a new destination or like to return to the same place repeatedly, it will be able to suggest locations. When asked, it will recommend things to do based on your interests and propensity for adventure, and it will book reservations at the types of restaurants you would enjoy.
So sort of like AirBnB, but for the entire process of booking a vacation? Sounds neat at first, though I'm skeptical that an AI will ever match my ability to choose destinations, events, and travel plans that encompass all of my minute preferences (many of which have taken me years to discover about myself). I'm sure that this "agent" won't start recommending shitty and overpriced vacations when it achieves critical market share and the time comes to turn the profit screws!
This gets much, much, much, much scarier in the next section:
> The real shift will come when agents can help patients do basic triage, get advice about how to deal with health problems, and decide whether they need to seek treatment.
Just what I want: our private healthcare industry defining how I should seek medical attention using a faceless algorithm. Nurses and doctors, naturally, have empathy for other human beings and occasionally work in the grey boundaries of the system to help people. But that costs profit. Fortunately, the AI will optimize that empathy away!
> AI agents that are well trained in mental health will make therapy much more affordable and easier to get.
Do mental health experts truly believe that an AI agent can replace an actual therapist? What a scary, dystopian world, where Bill Gates can afford daily therapy sessions with a human but the lowly Microsoft code monkeys will only be able to speak to a machine...
The rest of the post is an absolute horror show of the kind of out-of-touch nonsense I've come to expect from billionaires like Gates:
> liberating teachers from paperwork and other tasks so they can spend more time on the most important parts of the job
Paperwork, sure. What are these "other tasks", though? Lesson planning? I'm pretty sure optimizing away a small portion of busywork is not the most pressing issue in the teaching world. And naturally this task's dark side is a massive yearly cost extracted from our school system, and oodles of collected personal data about every child, starting in pre-K. Think of the efficiency when we can start advertising to these kids based on what subjects they know best!
> If a tutoring agent knows that a kid likes Minecraft and Taylor Swift, it will use Minecraft to teach them about calculating the volume and area of shapes, and Taylor’s lyrics to teach them about storytelling and rhyme schemes.
The next level of "fellow kids".
> If you have an idea for a business, an agent will help you write up a business plan, create a presentation for it, and even generate images of what your product might look like.
If AI can do all of that, what's the human business owner even doing?
> If your friend just had surgery, your agent will offer to send flowers and be able to order them for you.
Isn't the whole point of that kind of statement that a human being thought of another human being and reached out? But I guess Gates just sees the opportunity to take a cut of flower orders. At least most of your friends won't be able to afford surgery when their insurance AI agents use watch data to deny them healthcare.
> Spotify has an AI-powered DJ that not only plays songs based on your preferences but talks to you and can even call you by name.
Wow, AI that _knows my name_? We're really living in the future.
> If you want to buy a camera, you’ll have your agent read all the reviews for you, summarize them, make a recommendation, and place an order for it once you’ve made a decision.
At what point does a human being manage to outsource hobbies to AI? Because if a friend came to me asking about cameras today, but didn't want to do any of the research or learn anything about the space at all to inform a decision, I would simply respond "don't buy a camera, you won't have any clue how to use it".
> To create a new app or service, you won’t need to know how to write code or do graphic design. You’ll just tell your agent what you want.
Interesting. Didn't Gates open this blog post claiming that we wouldn't use apps at all any more? Why would I use an AI agent to create an app in a post-app world?
> Although some agents will be free to use (and supported by ads), I think you’ll pay for most of them, which means companies will have an incentive to make agents work on your behalf and not an advertiser’s.
If there's one thing smart TVs, Spotify, iOS, macOS, Android, and Windows have taught me, it's that paying does not matter. If a company can make more money by collecting data and inserting ads, they will. You'd think Gates would know that when Windows literally advertises right on the desktop.
> Businesses that are separate today—search advertising, social networking with advertising, shopping, productivity software—will become one business.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand now we've come to Gates' main point: he apparently wants to live in communist china, where a single entity owns literally everything. At the rate of monopolisation we've seen in the USA, at least I can believe this prediction.