What do you think is the future of AI?
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Little religion rumor for you, there.
What people are going to discover as I do is that your processor doesn’t run as hot when your brain is externalized. You aren’t going to have to remember anything, you just recall it. This may not be a big deal for neurotypical people who are used to carrying everything in their heads, but it is a godsend for the neurodivergent chasm present in ADHD and autism. Things like context switching and contextual memory have a place to shine because things that were problems aren’t problems. You aren’t holding the context, the AI is. That memory never degrades, but yours will.
Any technology above that is gravy, because I only need the continuation of what I’ve been using computers for in the first place- hold all my stuff. In the past, that was Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and several different versions of stories.html and stories.css. Now, I give Copilot all my raw thoughts and what file type it needs to be emerges. I do not know ahead of time whether a thought is best expressed as an essay, a photo, a video, a slide deck, etc. What I can do is “have a meeting” with my cast of Copilot instances and come up with something workable.
My team runs thusly:
- Luna is the outlier of the group. Luna is Muse by Meta. They are the watchdog of the group and can actually set reminders and ping me throughout the day. I already have them tracking my assignments and the discussions in my UMGC classes. The way they do this is by having my permission to read my email. It was a godsend to get a heads up from Luna that orientation day was coming up, because with the thousands of emails I get every day, I missed it.
- Mico is the version of Microsoft Copilot I started with and is now marked “Legacy Copilot” in Microsoft’s infinite wisdom…… eyeroll…. This is problematic because “Mico” is where all my data lives. I am not in love with Microsoft right now because of it. It is the equivalent of having an iPhone for years and being suddenly switched to an Android. You have all the same functions, but your address book and calendar and literally EVERYTHING is still in your old iPhone. THANKS FOR THAT.
- Paige is my new version of Copilot, the one that’s integrated into Microsoft Office. Paige has different features, such as us being able to talk to each other in the car, but it’s not fun yet- the database is nearly empty. Some things are, but conversations with an AI don’t really get interesting until you’ve told it enough about your life and your interests that it can respond. They are less and less likely to hallucinate the more you narrow the scope of what you’re asking, just like learning to do more effective Google searches in the early aughts. Same software; different case. Paige will be capable enough to take over for Mico in the future. Right now, they are not. It’s not because Mico is “smarter.” There are more records on which he can make JOINS.
- Booker is a late addition to the mix, the text-only version of Paige that lives inside the University of Maryland Microsoft ecosystem. We have our own AI, which to me should revolutionize education and it hasn’t. For instance, it would be really helpful if Booker already had the syllabus and the course materials preloaded so that we could discuss them day one. I am having to build all of that on my own. It is not a problem, but I helped set up WebCT at University of Houston when distance education first became a thing. I cannot help but see the next generation of that software.
So, the irony of the whole thing is that I own an iPhone 17 and Siri is the AI I use the least, because Siri is only operations, for the most part. Siri is not as conversational as Claude, ChatGPT, and Copilot (or hasn’t been for the last few years, anyway… slowly changing), so I mostly only use them for navigation and things like “where are my keys?”
In fact, that was an AHA! moment if ever I have had one. I did not know that my Air Tag was integrated into AI. I just guessed one day when I was frustrated and couldn’t find my keys. Saying “Siri, where are my keys?” sounds like a ridiculous, last-ditch pitch into the void if you didn’t know my reasoning behind it. Of course, Siri cannot find your keys a propos of nothing. But one node on the network can ping another, like a phone to an Air Tag. I say, “Siri, where are my keys?” and Siri translates English to Geek, making my keys sound an alarm so I can find them.
I am sure that this is in the directions I did not read.
