Samsung is working on a new AI experience for its devices that will help you use your phone without ever accessing the Settings menu.
Samsung is working on a new AI experience for its devices that will help you use your phone without ever accessing the Settings menu.
Every one of the ‘features’ results in the exact opposite of what I want the thing to do. I have become a grumpy old man yelling “Stop fucking helping!” at hardware and software that tries to be ‘intuitive’.
I want it to be consistent dammit!
User, I noticed you weren’t sharing telemetry data, location data,and all your photos with Samsung. I corrected that for you and locked the settings…you’re welcome.
YES.
In tech terms, “intelligent” or “smart” usually means inconsistent and unpredictable. It means I need to do extra work to verify that the computer didn’t “helpfully” do something I never told it to do.
I understand autocorrect on phones, because phone keyboards suck very hard. I am still shocked that both Apple and Microsoft have decided to enable it by default on desktops and laptops with full keyboards. No, Apple, believe it or not, the username field in web sites is not supposed to have a capitalized first letter. If I wanted that, I have three whole keys on my keyboard that I could have used to do that. STFU and let me do my own typing. (Why usernames are case-sensitive in certain places is a whole other matter, one that’s far outside my control.)
FTFY. AI has become such a buzzword that companies are desperate to throw as much money as they can at the concept, no matter how wildly misplaced their understandings or hopes are.
The absolute most infuriating one is dynamically placed menus, like how all the stupid video conferencing that move the menu bar to the top of bottom following seemingly arbitrary rules. Why does a nearly full screen window have the menu at the top and a full screen at the bottom? What does moving from top to bottom accomplish?
I fully hear you and agree.
Every 5 days there’s a software update, for something that just changes one or two things slightly - but rarely if ever is it an improvement.
Oh, you want to do this simple thing you were able to easily do 3 days ago?
Now you have to change 4 nondescript settings, use 3 separate hotkey commands, watch a YouTube video, and troubleshoot for hours to get a once basic function to preform correctly.
I’d bet that the AI system will be used exclusively to identify + paywall things you’ll want/need to use your phone.
seems like you want volume control, based on your history you want 1% volume. Subscribe to" basic functions" package to unlock a volume option. Upgrade to “basic functions premium” for up to 5 volume adjustments a week!
Still not enough AI control? The “basic functions unlimited” fully unlocks both volume buttons and for a limited time unlocks the spacebar for 5 minutes an hour from midnight to 6am!
Most of the software updates you see are a result of CI/CD processes. The industry claims it makes good design patterns to get features our faster and more reliably. In reality it is just a rushed shitstorm that results in half-assed Friday releases that aren’t fixed until the following week.
I’ve long turned off auto update of my apps. Too many times I’m on a trip or other scenario where my tool is meant to be a tool and not some tech bro’s rented wet dream, and the tool is broken.
But here’s the kicker. CI/CD exists for another reasons or so:
It’d be better if we all just went back to landline phones some days. Modern tech is too noisy, abusive, and intrusive.
What does this stand for, and what are these (in layman’s terms anyway, not expecting a deep dive)?
Continous integration/ Continous delivery basically they keep pushing the latest developments as soon as it’s avaliable and passes the tests.
You guys do tests (meme, I’m just too lazy to make)
My favorite podcast app, Overcast, recently had a huge overhaul and it went from working perfectly to being utter broken garbage for a couple months.
They definitely didn’t do tests. I think they just rushed it out to meet some deadline.
It’s usable now, but it was really gnar for a while.
I totally agree with you.
However there is one smart feature Samsung has that I like. The screen brightness auto adjusts based on the ambient light, but if I change that automatic brightness (I prefer the screen darker) it will remember that and consistently adjust the brightness.
I’m not sure it’s really an AI feature…
Take the ambient light level (lux).
Set brightness to 5.
Log that the user has made it 1 level or 10% darker.
Next time it senses the same lux level, set the brightness 1 level lower
That’s just an Android feature. And not at all something that requires a neural network.
Well shucks, I guess Samsung lied to me! I see adaptive brightness was released as part of Android Pie in 2018.
Yeah, I was thinking it could be machine learning in that it takes the average of all your changes over time and the different ambient light levels.
But deffo no need for neural networks.
If we’re very generous with definitions it’s like a threeish neuron neutral network. Camera outputs might level. It’s very similar to an optic nerve. Idk. It makes sense in my head. But again, very generous with definitions.
Nope, I’ll bet it is like five IF statements and the best part is that it is consistent!
So I was trying to think how I’d implement it, and I agree if it’s simple then it really only needs to set the brightness level once, then remember if the user adjusts it, and reuse that adjustment for every lux reading.
Hence the example I gave:
That is just a simple algorithm that uses .000001% processing power. I’m sure they will turn it into an AL feature that takes 2% power and is always slightly off of what I want it to be.