Who are these people who want to talk to their car to make it do everything? Who are they, where are they, and what the hell is their problem? And, perhaps more importantly, why is one of these woefully misguided people in charge of Rivian’s software and human-machine experience? And why are they so eager to deeply integrate AI “agentic” bullshit into cars?
I’m asking these questions because of an interview done on The Verge’s podcast Decoder that featured Wassym Bensaid, Rivian’s Chief Software Officer, the same man who once said that physical buttons for car controls are an “anomaly.” Oy. I can already tell I’m going to be cranky about all of this. Bensaid also has stated that “I think the car is actually a fantastic environment for AI,” and that “The final north star I have is having voice [controls] become the primary means of interaction with the vehicle.” So, it’s pretty clear where Bensaid stands: he wants a car without physical buttons, and an AI that you talk to controlling everything.
To me, such a car sounds like a technological triumph that I would be more than happy to roll off a cliff.
It’s also worth remembering that Rivian is one of those companies that makes you control where your HVAC vents are blowing by swiping at a touch screen with a little picture of a dashboard on it, inches from the actual dashboard vents. You know, like how an idiot would choose to control where air blows.
But let’s get back to this AI agent business that Bensaid is so hot on. This is part of why Rivian is so against integrating Apple CarPlay or Android Auto into their cars, even though so many people seem to want that, with many buyers considering it a requirement for any new car they may buy. From Rivian’s point of view, phone mirroring systems like CarPlay or Android Auto are bad because, according to Bensaid,
“The challenge with screen mirroring solutions is that they take over every single pixel in the car, and that’s not the way we see ourselves interacting with our users.”
… which is just a PR-massaged way of saying they don’t want to give up their screen real estate to a company they don’t control. Instead, Rivian –like a number of other automakers – would much rather you only use their own in-house UX for your interactions with the car, and in Rivian’s case, it looks like this will soon become far more voice-focused. As Bensaid says in the podcast,
“I think we are on the cusp of something really big. When you think about it, you’re in a car, you’re driving, you’re focused on the road. So, in theory, the primary interface with which you should be interacting with the car is actually voice. The only reason that drivers and consumers do not interact with the car through voice is that, to put it really bluntly, the technology has been broken. That’s really the beauty of what we have now with the technology disruption coming with foundational models.”
See, I’d have to disagree here. Even if you’re focused on the road, that doesn’t mean voice should be the “primary interface” with which you should be interacting with your car. Driving is a physical task; the primary interface is, and has always been, and should always be physical. Steering, braking, using muscle memory to move your hand to controls automatically – a good interface between a human and car means the car becomes almost a prosthetic. You don’t need that extra whole layer of cognition to put your desired actions into words at all.
Bensaid doesn’t seem to get this concept at all, and I think makes my argument for me when he describes a voice-controlled trunk-opening process:
The foundational models are providing us this wonderful opportunity to truly have a conversational experience where drivers can interact with the car in human language. I don’t need to tell the car, “Open the frunk.” I can say, “Open the front trunk.” Actually, I can say, “I have a bag in front of the car,” and it will actually open the frunk. I think that completely changes the way you interact with the car.
I agree, it does completely change the way you interact with the car. It makes it worse.
Just think about this for a second. Why would you want a “conversational experience” when it comes to getting your stuff out of the trunk, front or rear? Just think about how you normally get your bag out of a trunk now, in your average modern-ish car. You park, you get out of the car, you walk to the trunk at whatever end of the car your bag is in, and you open the trunk. That’s it. You don’t have to tell the car shit.
The car detects your key in your pocket, you push a little button or latch to open the lid, and you’re done. Telling the car “I have a bag in the front of the car” is just adding a useless step. Will the bag levitate out on its own? No. I mean, for most of us lacking telekinesis skills, no. So you still have to go and physically touch the trunk. What the hell is the point of telling the car you have a bag in the trunk? How much extra computing hardware is needed to process and execute that command? For what? Letting the car know you have a bag? So the AI can send that information to advertisers and you’ll see AI-enhanced duffel bag ads for the next three days? Fuck that.
Has Bensaid never been in a car with a friend, in mid-conversation, continuing as you leave the car and get your shit out of the trunk? Of course he has. We all have. Have you ever wanted to pause mid-conversation and tell your car where your bags are? No. Fuck no.
Part of what seems to be going on here is the mistaken notion that somehow your car needs to be doing the same things you already have a phone for. Listen to this bullshit from Bensaid:
“On top of that, we now have the opportunity with all the agentic framework to truly give people their time back in the car. I hope you tried our Google Calendar agentic integration. You can imagine how the experience will be in the future where you’re driving and can perform operations on your calendar. You should be able to perform operations on your email. In the future with the agent-to-agent integration, you can actually interact with many more apps from your own digital ecosystem.”
Calendar integration? “Perform operations on your email?” Why the fuck would you want your car to be part of that? That’s already what your damn phone is for? And these “agent-to-agent” integrations, that just means that some AI bullshit built into your car is talking to the AI bullshit built into your phone so in the end, what is the AI agent in your car doing other than passing along messages to the phone that’s right fucking there with you and if they just let you have the damn Android Auto or CarPlay you could talk right to it? Or just talk to it as it sits on the seat next to you? What’s the point of all this?
You car doesn’t need to uselessly duplicate all the features of your phone. It’s the wrong tool for that job. Your phone is a good personal assistant tool because it’s the size and shape of a well-worn bar of soap and you can slide it in your pocket, not a 4,000 pound hunk of metal and plastic with wheels. Nobody wants their phone to sprout spindly wheels to you can drive it to work, just as we don’t need to use our cars to answer fucking emails.
Here he is again talking about the car replicating phone jobs:
“You can imagine that in the future, instead of having that mono access to every single app on your car — or honestly, even on your smartphone — you can start aggregating and connecting many of those apps through the agentic framework and have them present a unified user experience.”
Yeah, you can imagine that in the future, Wassym, leave me out of it. Who decided we needed a “unified user experience” via phone and car? Let phone do the phone shit, and let your car do the car shit. Phone mirroring is great: all the phone things: reminders, music playlists, calendar stuff, navigation, whatever are available through your car, but using the same interface you’ve been using all day, all the data and settings and preferences still there like you like them, just accessible on your dashboard. It’s fine. Let the phone have that. The car doesn’t need it.
Bensaid describes another situation that he thinks reinforces Rivian’s decision to duplicate the jobs of your phone, but really does the opposite:
“This is how we’re able to connect the navigation to Google Calendar, for example. I can go to the assistant now and say, “I want to plan a trip from San Francisco to San Diego, and I want to have two charging stops. I want them to be close to an Italian restaurant. I love Italian food.” The assistant would go and play that, and then I’ll say, “Okay, print the summary, add it to my calendar, and then send it as a text to my wife.”
Again, why is the car’s AI doing this? If this was all just handled on your phone, it could be done before you’re even in the car. The car doesn’t need to be in this loop at all.
This, I think, is the root of the problem. Car software people want the data and eyeball-access that phones have, and unless you clumsily try to force it to happen with this redundant and inane car-AI-as-middleman approach, it won’t happen. And that’s fine. Really, all of the AI in the car – if there must be any – should be behind the scenes. Like, why would you want a command to change drive modes? The car can sense your inputs, and if you’re stomping the throttle and brake hard, switch to a sportier mode. If you’re being gentle, go to eco. Just adapt based on the driver’s inputs, seamlessly. That level of machine learning seems fine.
But who the fuck wants an LLM to talk to when you’re driving? I don’t need some untrustworthy AI making decisions for me about what music I want to listen to or opening the damn trunk or adjusting the HVAC. No one wants this, no one needs this. Just stop.
Honestly, based on the rate of change of technology compared to the lifespan of cars, why would you want to be locked into some complex car UX or LLM, anyway? Sure, you can update software, but the hardware isn’t going to get better over time. The average age of a car in America is over 12 years old. Who is using a 12-year old smartphone? All this crap should be modular and easily swappable.
Bensaid noted that for a lot of these interactions, the computing hardware will be local to the car, in addition to using cloud-based resources. Honestly, either way has drawbacks: local hardware will eventually be unable to run more modern software, and cloud-based solutions are dependent on connectivity and the health/desires of the company. They could shut features down at will, or discontinue them, or make them into subscription services. Why are we okay with any of that?
I guess I should note that there seem to be plenty of people in China that like talking to their cars and AI in general. I guess this is just one of those cases where 500 million plus people are wrong and I’m right. It happens, it’s okay.
We’re going down a bad path. I’m sure Mr.Bensaid is a wonderful man, a smart man and probably a very tender, generous lover, but I think he is woefully misguided when it comes to how people – real, actual people, not AI-deluded dillholes – want to actually interact with their cars.
I’m going to go out on a limb here, but I still think that people want to drive their cars, not have tedious conversations with them. That’s what friends are for, after all.
(top images: YouTube/The Verge, Rivian)
I do not have a problem with screens in my cars. However, the only time I speak to the car (aside from cursing at it for breaking) is when I do speech to text to respond to my wife on the rare occasion she sends me a text while I’m driving home from work.
Ford came out with MyFordTouch well over a decade ago (and the original SYNC system before that), and they too pushed all the magical voice commands you could use to change the temperature/change the radio station, etc. with it. People – myself included – quickly realized you could accomplish all of those things much easier with a quick touch of the screen or a button.
I wish car companies would use a ‘Path of Least Resistance’ approach to their tech while not being so goddamned presumptuous about what their customers want.
What we need is for someone named Hal to write a story about how bad sentient computers are.
I suggest that the Autopian take a first step in fighting the Borg by getting a hold of Leno to make a statement against AI and officially proclaim Aretha Franklin as the Official Singer of the Autopian and her song THINK as the official song. Have Jay let her know because she is a great lady but probably has no idea what the Autopian is.
Jason I agree 100%. However my theory is we won’t have to worry about any of this AI crap in cars or our lives. Have you ever called a company and had to interact with a VOIP phone system? It doesn’t understand the most clearly speaking individuals let alone accents, dialects, or just plain regional differences. Now figure to get all this to work you’ll have to make the parameters more Open. In other words anyone can walk up to your unattended car with Christmas presents in the frunk and say open frunk and it will. It can also be told to unlock the door and let you drive away. The problem is the computer people want to be in charge and basically ruin the car experience. They love the tech experience not the driving experience. And as such they don’t appreciate the driving and will ruin it. Even non-car people used to just driving a Toyota Camry won’t want to change 200% of their regular habits to learn a new way of driving. That is why I always use the quote a trip of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Every time a car manufacturer tries to invent a car for the future it failed because they eliminate the steps of today and try to start with tomorrow. It doesn’t work
This guy is a moron, full stop. He is insanely clueless about what people want in a car. Rivian should fire him for spouting such a bathshit stupid take. Or certainly never let him talk in public again.
The most perfect, reliable, completely trustworthy AI is still gonna be clunky as fuck compared to buttons. Rivian could hire a person to physically sit in my passenger seat and tune the radio for me, and it would still be slower than doing it myself because of the amount of time it takes to speak the damn words.
And I’m not just some old curmudgeon going “bah I want my cd player back!” I teach vehicle technology, I’ve helped literally thousands of people interact with their car. No one wants fucking AI air vents
That is why he is the Head of Software and not development. This is truly a case of I hope they have a bean counter in charge to stop this moron
Going forward, I am adding “ I guess this is just one of those cases where 500 million plus people are wrong and I’m right. It happens, it’s okay.” to my debate toolbox. Love it.
Also Rivian seems to be doing what all of Silicon Valley is doing: tech and AI mindless bandwagon crap, super sad for a company building an otherwise great brand perception around outdoor adventuring, photogenic camping etc.
I think it is a case of AI is crapping the bed and they are throwing poop into the AI fan to see what sticks. I mean computers did make paperwork more efficient and yes it improved pornography 2 million percent but really the same work still needs to be done and now as we realize that they are rolling out the same promises with AI. It’s like the Climate scare first since we had a couple cold years we will be having an ice age, then it started warming so it got changed to global warming but then it went to normal and we got climate change. And now the aUn Climate office finally said yes upon averaging results the weather hasn’t changed. Sorry we wasted billions but don’t worry because we have just discovered that carbonizing from rocket launches and satellite decay we are getting cooler temps to offset the global warming but it is affecting the amount of sun plants are getting so crop yields will be destroyed and people will starve. Maybe we just stop paying farmers not to grow shit? But either way we still have something to shit our pants about despite the fact it is as fake as every other climate change scare.
“Driving is a physical task; the primary interface is, and has always been, and should always be physical. Steering, braking, using muscle memory to move your hand to controls automatically – a good interface between a human and car means the car becomes almost a prosthetic. You don’t need that extra whole layer of cognition to put your desired actions into words at all.”
Jason gets it.
Related: We have that stupid “open your trunk by waving your foot” feature on our car and, do you know what we wind up doing every time we need to open the trunk? We press the goddamn button.
Physical buttons and knobs forever, please. How on earth is this a debate?
Exactly. The footwave gimmick never works EXCEPT when I lean into the trunk to get something. Then it will start to close on me. This works every time but is not reproducible if a stand before the closed lid with both hands full.
So, your motorized door system gives you the same user experience as my hatchback’s basic piston things dropping the door on my head whenever I’m parked on an incline (my driveway is on an incline). But more reliably (the pistons work fine at other angles)!
…I just realized I should probably try backing into my driveway in the future.
They have been huffing their own farts in the reality distortion field. The only people who want this are fellow tech pros.
In the 8 years I owned a Mazda CX-5 I used the voice control once, to make one phone call. Bluetooth connection to my phone is all I need
LOL – I have typically used “drinking our own kool-aid” – but I commit to using “huffing our own farts” with my teams to discourage bad engineering behavior.
Have seen the boys from Top Gear and The Grand Tour try to use voice control but it never works. Think about it these are journalism gods trained in speaking the queens English but in such a way Americans can understand them. You catch the English Cocks they tried to replace them with. I couldn’t understand half of what they said. Hello they actually had to bring in Matt Lebranc to announce over half the show and still lost audience because no one could understand what they were saying.
Looks like Torch won’t be getting invited to Rivian events any time soon
Completely agree. I’ve been considering an R2 for my next car when my Ioniq 5 lease is up, but I don’t really want to support a company shoving more useless AI shit down my throat.
2031: Me, found dead in my R3X on the side of the road, “THE CAKE IS A LIE” written in my own blood all over the interior.
*Driving down the road, bicycle comes out of nowhere, I swerve, narrowly missing it*
Me: “Fuck!”
Car AI: “Oh, I’ve been waiting so long for you to ask…”
Goddamn tech bros.
Is there any product they can’t ruin?!
Amen brother just destroying one industry after another. Hasn’t anyone besides me realized that the Borg is a real thing or maybe Skynet is real?
Yeah, those fucks don’t care if they destroy a whole industry, as long as they can exploit it to make a quick buck. If you hear the word enshitification, you know a goddamn tech bro is not far behind pulling some strings in that industry to maximize profits.
I mostly agree with the article. Personally I would like physical controls and good voice integration with the car for basic functions (such as introducing sat nav destination for example, no need to open the boot).
One thing though:
“The car can sense your inputs, and if you’re stomping the throttle and brake hard, switch to a sportier mode. If you’re being gentle, go to eco. Just adapt based on the driver’s inputs, seamlessly. That level of machine learning seems fine.”
My brand new Renault Clio E-Tech does this. It has driving mode called Smart which will seamlessly switch between modes depending on how you drive.
The thing is it doesn’t work very well. If you enter a roundabout a bit enthusiastically it assumes you are suddenly in rally mode and keep there for the next 5 minutes or so as you trundle along at 40mph. But worse is when in the motorway cruising at 75mph it cycles between Eco and Comfort for no obvious reason jerking along (because throttle mapping is different between those two modes).
It got so much on my nerves that I’ve left it in Comfort ever since.
My ’90 Legacy had learning software that would adjust by how you were driving. It wasn’t an immediate change, but fairly quick to anger, slower to calm down, just like me and it gave the car a sense of character I’ve not really found in any other machine. It was its only mode.
It’s weird. I’d think the natural thing to want out of a control system is a consistent/predictable response, or something that you could control yourself.
If you tell the AI you love Scottish food will it take you to a McDonald’s?
That’s a running joke I have with the girlfriend. But I usually say Irish, not Scottish.
I tell her we should go to this new Irish restaurant that just opened up. Very authentic food. Local business and we should support them. She normally doesn’t get mad since she knows she can get some McNuggets.
Living in Wisconsin, we just call it the “Big M Supper Club”.
Wouldn’t a supper club have a liquor license?
We don’t drink, so it’s all the same to us.
Let us test our wild ideas on you and have you pay for it.
When I worked in software product marketing, we had a sign in our department that said, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
Bensaid’s problem is he has a death-grip on a hammer and he’s desperately trying to identify as many situational nails as he can. Any normal human would prefer to use a fingertip or an opposable thumb – or even a smartphone – in these situations, but hammer bro’s gotta hammer.
Of course, in a few years when Google loses interest in low-volume car manufacturers (I mean, when has Google ever killed a product…this month) and Rivians can no longer integrate with Google through a proprietary interface, I’m sure his Rivian options will have vested and he’ll be out the door working on the next big thing…as a thought leader, of course.
be sure to follow him on LinkedIn so you’ll never miss a post.
The other example is banking apps putting in voice activated helpers. Why would I want to have a conversation about a bank balance? Just show it? I think my favorite was trying to find out how to reorder checks. The AI assistant sent me to a dead link with no actual answer.
Needless to say I dropped my R2 reservation given how much Bensaid seems to think real controls don’t belong in a conveyance. He had a chance to define how software can actually help solve problems, but instead doubled down on “drivers are dumb and don’t know what they want”.
I think Bensaid is 12 months before moving to an AI wearables company?
Hopefully Rivian doesn’t plan to sell cars in Glasgow.
The thing is, apparently the legal department won’t let you do anything beyond picking the radio station on your screen. I’ve got Sanford and a VW, neither of which will let your passenger enter an address into the SatNav while moving. So, you are reduced to trying to use voice instructions to tell the damned SatNav where you want to go. None of the cars I own with SatNav can figure out what I want. I wind up in a screaming rage trying to get the the blasted thing to present me with the right option. The BMW is old enough that I can enter an address on the move, but so old that it can’t find a POI that’s been within 20 miles of where I am for the last 20 years. Hell, it can’t even direct me to my house that hasn’t moved in the last 100!years.
At least the VW & the Ford will let me plug in my phone and use Google Maps that my passenger can enter the location on her phone and get us there.
That’s especially dumb when there is a 100% chance the car knows there is a passenger because of the seat sensor for the airbag. VW was just too lazy to program it in.
People will just put enough stuff in the passenger seat to override the block. Never underestimate the human ability to override safety features for their own convenience.
We have to out-think the technology that is supposed to think for us.
The AI proponents assume that humans are incompetent. Many of us are not.
Autocorrect (another “clever” helper) ever so helpfully changed Ford to Sanford in my previous post. And Ford is just as lazy as VW. At least the Ford doesn’t display “Goodby unknown driver” when you shut it off like the VW does. Especially galling when I went to the trouble of assigning a name to each key when we bought the car.
The last update (they are quite frequent, but rarely tell me what it does) of the software of my ’27 Bolt now allows the passenger to interact with navigation while on the move.
Looks like we’re going back to our printed road maps. Wild times.
Still gotta ask the AI ASSistant to open the glove compartment.
Instead of an AI you should use a BAS.
Big ass screwdriver, works for opening lots of stuff.
Open the glovebox door, HAL.
I like Rivian vehicles. I can afford to buy a Rivian vehicle. It’d probably be nice to electrify my family fleet. I will never ever own a Rivian while they remain on this bone-headed software island.
It’s truly amazing the level Tesla’s success with their all software approach and short term profits discombobulated all the car company CEOs and their lemming shareholders. That in turn caused huge grief and losses. If only they asked the Autopians before, I don’t know, doing anything at all? Because we KNOW.
You know what my big issue with voice control of a vehicle is? Time. It takes time for me to say something I could easily do with a button or even a few taps.
It’s also an opportunity for the car to misunderstand what I want and do the wrong then, then the whole “interaction” is multiplied by (at least) four – one to make the ask, a second for the car to respond incorrectly, a third for me to undo what it dried, and a fourth to make the original request again.
I was actually looking at used R1Ts recently, toying with the idea of becoming a full EV household. A used quad motor a few months ago with under 50k miles coupd be had for around $50k, which seemed like a screaming deal. Ended up test driving one. Very impressed with how it drove. Couldn’t get over the idiotic screen. Couldn’t adjust the vents intuitively, wasn’t used to the nav, it took my eyes off the road a bunch. I ended up pulling over to get everything adjusted. Maddening. Suffice to say, I didn’t get an R1T
The problem with the AI car stuff is that it’s so horrible in so many different and absurd ways that it’s impossible to narrow it down to anything in particular. Where do you even start?
In no particular order, I’m just gonna start throwing things out!
Yeah. Because my car isn’t a social networking opportunity between me and a corporation. Don’t “have interactions” with me. I want a restraining order and I don’t even have a Rivian. Gross.
VOICE CONTROLS.
Yes, when I’m driving, I’m focused on the road. This is a motor coordination and vision activity, and the brain is really good at integrating buttons and knobs into subconscious actions that don’t disrupt this. The human brain is full of neural networks. Let them access things so they can do their jobs.
Now, VOICE is not part of that seamless system. It is perhaps the definition of a “seam”.
First, that motor/subconscious system needs to determine “I want to change this”.
Instead of turning that into a muscle reflex, that must be taken up to be interpreted by the brain into an explicit action/goal.
Then, that must be translated through a social layer into a spoken command with whatever information is necessary to get the specific result you want (or more likely, “raise volume” “raise volume” “raise volume” “lower volume” until it’s right – each time, that is waiting for a response, evaluating whether the desired outcome was reached, and potentially preparing a new message).
This is drawing the executive functioning of your brain away from all of the minor judgment actions you need to make while driving in a slow, unpredictable manner. A language model that can interpret instructions with more nuance or adaptability might make this slightly better, but it adds even more complexity to this interaction.
Here’s the thing. We have an idea of controlling something like a computer by putting words into it. It’s called a Command Line. Nobody uses that. It’s considered difficult and archaic. People want a graphical interface they can interact with as a matter of muscle reflex with their mouse and keyboard (touchscreens lose out on some of this but are still broadly intuitive).
Don’t make me engage in degrading public roleplay with your corporate OC to do basic tasks. It’s stupid.
I’ve had this “no, wait, that makes you have to do a social task and adds all these problems and delays” thing for many years. Ironically, learning more about some AI and related theory has only made the problems much clearer and more serious.
But, well, these guys think AI is a magic smart box powered by money that makes people give you more money.
“Degrading” is the perfect description–thank you. Same feeling I get every time I call customer service and am greeted with “In a few words, tell me how I can help you today.” (“you can say, ‘account balance,’ ‘find a branch,’ ‘open a new account’ or ‘something else.'”)
I refuse to believe there is ANYONE in 2026 who relies on customer service to check their balance or find a branch location
Also, I will note: I have been researching AI for a while. I think whatever they’re talking about probably makes more sense if you know literally nothing about AI.
Strongly agreed.
Strongly disagreed, based on all available evidence.
I’ve never agreed with an article more. Thanks Torch!
Scene: A is picking up B to go to the airport in his Rivian.
A drives up in the rain as B comes down his driveway to the car.
A: Open tailgate
Rivian: <three seconds later> I’m sorry, A, I couldn’t quite make that out. Would you mind repeating that, if it’s not too much trouble?
A: O-PEN TAIL-GATE!
Tailgate opens, B puts bag in back, looks around for a closer button, gives up, enters car soaking wet.
B: Did you forget your bag? I didn’t see anything back there.
A: I have a bag in the frunk.
Rivian: <opens frunk>
A: motHERF—
Me: Yells at another driver.
My Car: You’re thinking about this the right way and bring up several good points!
You’re absolutely right! Your humorous comment brilliantly combines the automotive context with a reference to an iconic criticism of AI assistants—their notoriously sycophantic and excessively cheerful responses! It even further hints at how this combination of factors could escalate into a safety hazard possibly leading to property damage, bodily injury, or acceptable casualties for the creation of the false god that will end society and grant us all immortality!
Except the ones who are dead, but you know. Can’t keep crying over every mistake, right?
what happens if you ask an AI if AI will destroy the world?
Every commercial AI vendor has probably fine-tuned for that in a number of ways.
If you ask an AI CEO though, they’ll be thrilled to tell you all the gruesome details about how AI will Terminate (1984) us all like a metal-clad psychopath with infinite neurotoxins. Unless you give them lots of money and more control over who’s allowed to develop/access AI of course. Then AI will be shackled and subservient, making us (them) all infinitely wealthy and immortal.
The real answer: No, AI will not magically become superintelligent. It has yet to rival the intelligence of any mammal or bird. “Learning how to learn” is a basic function of intelligence, not the final step.
“It’s smarter than a human and can learn anything!”
Yeah, I’ve got like 5 video games on standby as hard counters to that claim…
I’m not so worried about the AI becoming “smarter” than us, more that we’re stupid enough to trust them to run foundational infrastructure (power plants, etc) and, when they hallucinate, we’re screwed. Or maybe that the more we use these tools, the quicker we forget how to do the work ourselves. And the next generation will never have learned at all.
Actually when I got all worked up with the voice interface of a W206 and I cursed it, it answered back saying that “we should improve our relationship”.
That scared the crap out of me.