Frames, frictionlessness and furry friends
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Someone walks Moxie at midday on weekdays. They usually send photos from the walk. Today I got a photo while I was driving and—to my amazement—after speaking the message text, Siri added that the message included “a photo of a dog on a leash standing on a tiled surface.” This is why AI is not going anywhere any time soon.
Tech advocate and joy-spreader Sabrina Hersi Issa must have foreseen this when Moxie and I saw her last week. Because she offered a powerful and elegant framing for the AI question: as a tension between friction and frictionlessness:
Our desire to get more with less effort is fundamental, so if AI can help us manage email or a grocery list better, we’re not going to not use it. Who wouldn’t want a preview of what was in an attached photo? It’s the 2024 equivalent of “You have … [seven] … messages.”
Frictionlessness can be delightful. Remember the first time you used wifi? At the same time, adding friction (delay, difficulty, decisions) to an activity can serve other needs and desires. Weight machines build muscle. Speed limits prevent car crashes. “Are you sure?” dialogs prevent accidental deletions.*
Technology-enabled living demands friction to prevent harms. Regulation, consumer awareness and business norms work in tension with the human appetite for frictionlessness.
This is a valuable way to frame the AI conversation because it a) is about society not just technology, and b) reminds us that adoption and adaptation go hand in hand.
Apple’s photo apps are so terrible at search and sort, that the AI already in place to find people, objects, dogs, is a big help. But the risks are many. How we talk about the tradeoffs determines a lot about how decisions get made, by engineers, consumers, regulators and machines.
* Yeah, it’s dialog for screen prompts and dialogue for conversations. I know usage is destiny, but I will still die on this hill.