"Imagine, for example, asking your washing machine whether it’s safe to wash a beloved item of clothing on a certain setting—literally, asking it out loud or via an app." Right, now imagine that the generative AI, BECAUSE it's generative AI, gives you an answer that's pure garment-ruining bullshit.
One of the first things I found myself doing the “take glasses off so I can squint more closely at it” thing was in fact a clothing tag, so I feel this
But that’s an issue that bifocals/progressives solve, not AI
I prefer extremely large 80s-esque frames for correcting my nearsightedness and they’re less compatible with slapping a pair of readers over them as needed
I obtained one pair of progressives and gave them a solid week of trying to get used to them and honestly— I will take my glasses off and squint or just straight get bifocals next time.
I actually like the progressive a lot, but so much of my day is spent onscreen or reading that the prescription readers really worked out. I do still take any glasses off for close-up work, though. It's practically a reflex at this point.
fuck, now I'm thinking of a use case for Smartness
Smart Laundry Tag encodes the settings you can wash it on
Smart Washing Machine automatically sets it/warns if the wrong thing is in for the setting
...this is very clearly *not* a use case for Large Language Models
I only want this if it also includes an airgap/no wifi connection
Because frankly I don’t trust literally any manufacturer to not be tempted by the data brokers waving money at them in exchange for knowing when I wash my delicates or whatever
My car's RFID door lock system is "smart".
About half the time when I walk up to the car, it re-locks rather than unlocking for me, and takes several tries to get it to unlock.
yeah, and you have to make sure the clothes and the washing machine are interoperable
like if you have to buy special clothes to do this, you might as well just learn how to wash the clothes
It would literally be faster, easier and more accurate if your clothes labels had bar codes and you scanned them at the machine and it told you what could go together. And set the settings.
I was just researching new ranges and immediately eliminated anything that had incorporated "smart" anything. I'm going to have to pay through the nose for a dumb gas range that won't break or stop working when the wifi's out
When our local Lucky's grocery store folded up shop a couple years ago I got some computer and networking stuff through these auctioneers who handled it all, including food service equipment. There are similar companies around. Worth a look.
www.grafeauction.com
This is going to be me, soon.
The only "smarts" I want in an appliance are self-monitoring for diagnostics and performance tweaking. But that's not "AI," that's good old fashioned algorithms in action.
