What is AI good for anyway? Maybe not summarizing

Written by
Matt Rosoff
Published on
Aug. 12, 2024, 6:03 p.m.

There’s a fascinating look by John Herrman over at NYMag today at one of the big proposed uses of AI: summarizing content. We all need things summarized, right? Everybody’s too busy and overloaded with information. At least that’s what every tech company doing AI seems to be settling on.

The problem is the summaries that AI produces aren’t always very useful. Beyond the obvious joke applications, like an AI summary of the Mt. Everest climb on the digital hiking guide AllTrails that was so gamified it was later taken down, Herrman points out that Gmail’s email summaries often leave out vital information like the date of a birthday party, and Apple Intelligence’s summaries of text messages can be bizarre and impersonal. Read the full thing here.

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