Writing a Description of Your Child, Podcasts for the Ride to School: Do We Need CEOs' AI Use Cases?
On the podcast Equity, TechCrunch scrutinized the AI use cases pitched by tech company executives. Examples that bring AI into parenting and human relationships took center stage.
TechCrunch published a piece on November 1 (local time) taking a critical look at the AI use cases that tech executives have been promoting. The article is a write-up of a conversation from the podcast Equity. It asked whether the uses executives describe as convenient are things ordinary users actually need.
Two of the examples raised involve parenting: Marissa Mayer using AI to help write a description of her child, and Sam Altman’s suggestion of a personalized podcast for the ride to school. Altman’s idea is to combine family schedules with a child’s interests to create a podcast to listen to on the way to school. Both examples insert AI into everyday moments spent with children.
The discussion moved beyond the convenience of creating text and audio with ease, and turned to relationships between people. The participants also took up remarks Mark Zuckerberg has made about using AI to fill in for social relationships. The TechCrunch reporters asked whether real users need these kinds of applications. They also raised the concern that such tools could reduce the conversations people have with one another.
The question at the center of this conversation went a step beyond whether AI can do our work for us. The issue is which roles it would actually be helpful to hand over to AI within families and friendships. Two questions remain: whether the convenience executives tout translates into something useful in users’ own lives, and what effect it has on conversation and relationships.