Google on Wednesday began inviting Gemini users to let its chatbot read their Gmail, Photos, Search history, and YouTube data in exchange for possibly more personalized responses.

Josh Woodward, VP of Google Labs, Gemini and AI Studio, announced the beta availability of Personal Intelligence in the US. Access will roll out over the next week to US-based Google AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers.

  • MagicShel@lemmy.zip
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    3 days ago

    Mates, I’m positively effusive about AI compared to your average Lemmster. But I can’t for the life of me figure out why I would want personalized AI any more than I want personalized ads. Which is zero — that’s the amount of corporate-personalized shit I want in my life.

    • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      I would love an AI that was personalized to me and could answer the questions I want rather than shitting out generic shit that barely applies to my question. Something that knows me enough to help me with all the shit I don’t remember or have the energy to make myself start. That’s something I’ve dreamed about ever since I saw it in scifi media.

      But I want to OWN and CONTROL the data and the way the AI handles the data. Unfortunately I don’t have the hardware to make them run very well, so I don’t really bother. Corpo AI is just opening your shirt and telling them where to swing the golf club.

      • MagicShel@lemmy.zip
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        3 days ago

        I can see that, but also if I don’t own the AI, then knowledge it has about me could be used to manipulate me maybe in ways too subtle for me to notice.

    • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      I would be ok with it being like a person, more like an acquaintance at work maybe. Specifically meaning I would be ok with having the AI know about me only based on what I’ve said to it.

      But none of this surveillance economy stuff. And the AI model can be no snitch to big ad tech.

      • setsubyou@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Even that is just confusing. I sometimes use Perplexity (because Pro comes with my bank account - neobanks have zero focus). And by default it remembers things you say. So when I ask a question sometimes it will randomly decide to bring in something else I asked about before. E.g. I sometimes use it to look up programming related stuff, and then when I ask something else it will randomly research whatever language it thinks I like now in that context too and do things like suggest an anime based on my recent interest in Rust for no good reason.

        • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          That’s true, these supposedly intelligent systems are really stupid about this stuff still. Especially with limited room to store that additional ever growing context about you.

          I wasn’t accounting for quality, and it’s bad right now for this. And I’m skeptical it will get better. The models need to be tactful about using accumulated knowledge about the person driving.

          I can’t help but feel my descriptions getting more and more similar to just describing a competent person. And, I’m aware I’m being idealistic and what I’m OK with won’t be a product any time soon.

          I guess it would be fully on device, encrypted at rest and have a perfectly good memory of our conversations and it would be tactful in bringing in knowledge into conversations. I dunno, I’m just describing the ideal personal assistant AI. And many people would make it a companion. And… yeah, anyway. Surveillance capitalism and pervasive advertising is bad.

      • Jack_Burton@lemmy.ca
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        3 days ago

        I’m sure that’ll be a tiered pay option soon enough. $10 a month gets you an ai that’s just an acquaintance. Doesn’t “care”, forgets your name sometimes, doesn’t remember that thing you talked about last week. $50 a month gets you your ai best friend. It “cares”, remembers everything about you, makes suggestions based on what it knows about you, even goes out of it’s way to prompt you first and ask you how your dentist appt went.

        In my opinion ai is in the “drug dealer wandering around the club giving a free bump” phase. Once people get addicted and sew it into the fabric of every day life, these companies will up the price, make the cheaper tiers too frustrating to use, and charge up the ass. “Oh, you’ve got an ai boyfriend? Let’s see how much you’ll pay to keep it or have it lobotomized.”

        • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Yeah, I described this more in another reply. And the more I described what I would want from an ai assistant the more it made me realize how bad it would be for society.

  • NarrativeBear@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    No one wants this at all.

    They have been shoveling Gemini into all the smart speakers and Android Auto. Gemini can’t get anything correct.

    • Drusas@fedia.io
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      3 days ago

      I was reluctant to “upgrade”, but since that was forced, I’ve been using my smart speakers a lot more. Gemini can be helpful and (fairly–make sure your can sanity check) accurate.

      • Serinus@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        It’s always going to sound accurate. That’s what’s it’s built to do. It’s just that often the easiest way to sound accurate is to be accurate, but not always. Shortly after you forget that it’s going to fuck you.

        Better not forget.

        • Drusas@fedia.io
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          2 days ago

          Yeah, that’s why I mentioned that you need to be able to sanity check it. I’m familiar enough with the topics that I’m asking about that I can do so.

  • ImmersiveMatthew@sh.itjust.works
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    2 days ago

    I think this is the future, but it will be local, open source AI that you control that will be how it takes off. sure the corporate AIs will be more convenient, but I sense that people can “feel” that corporate in their AI and this will be a trust barrier. It is the same thing with the Metaverse. You can feel Zuck’s Metaverse is corporate in a way you do not feel on a flat screen and it is objectionable to most even if they cannot put their finger on why. AI and the Metaverse are personal, more in your face and more present which tickles something in your brain that demands that those you let in, you can trust.

    I am not sure what this wall should be called c but as it becomes more apparent, it will get a name. Anyone got a suggestions?

  • deliriousdreams@fedia.io
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    3 days ago

    There’s a lot of people claiming “no one wants this”.

    Thing is, people loved this when they introduced it with Google Now back in 2012. They literally used to trawl your inbox and tell you when to expect packages, when you had appointments, when your flight and hotel were booked for/when to leave for the airport.

    All of that was useful information and it was free. Later their assistant could call to book you a table at a restaurant or add things to your shopping list or whatever. Some of this functionality started off very clunky, but it could absolutely be useful. But slowly but surely people started realizing that they were the product and that in order for Google Now and assistant to do this stuff it had to be reading emails and processing information in the cloud. We didn’t have devices that could do that kind of processing on phone.

    After backlash (and likely because it wasn’t making them any money because they hadn’t figured out how to monetize the product yet), Google got rid of Google Now and Google Assistant took over.

    it did some of the same things but distracted users from what was missing with flashy new hardware and smart home things. Lots of people loved that stuff too.

    Then Sonos sued and forced them to kneecap their products. Suddenly the honeymoon was over in a big way. Some of the most basic smart home features were broken and in such a way that people who used them were irate.

    Some of those integrations and functionality returned eventually. But right in the middle of that Google launched Gemini and it sucked at most all of it. It keeps getting “better” supposedly. But for a lot of smart home users the magic has been lost. They want what they had and lost and Gemini isn’t even a reasonable facsimile of that.

    So it’s more that people are frustrated with Gemini and angry at Google for killing another service they found useful.

    People still want technology to make their lives easier and more efficient. But they also want privacy and for things to just work. Google hasn’t made a product that just worked in a long time and AI isn’t going to be it.

    • criss_cross@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I was gonna say I do know quite a few coworkers that love all this stuff.

      I despise it with the passion of 1000 suns but it’s not universal.

  • LostWanderer@fedia.io
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    3 days ago

    Eww, that’s the worse trade that one could possibly do. ROFL Given how much of a fail “AI” is at the moment, they could never deliver anything substantial with such a trade.

  • Tikiporch@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    No one wants personalized answers. They want smart answers, like what was promised: talking to a professor. The promise of AI was to help me look smart on the internet. I’m a dumbass, why would I want you to tell me more dumbass things?

  • floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 days ago

    “More personalised responses” means more finely tuned to influence your behaviour, not “smarter answers”

  • TJA!@sh.itjust.works
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    3 days ago

    They are already doing it right now. If you don’t want them to train in your data, you have to turn off history.

    If you turn off history, suddenly all integrations, also on your phone, don’t work anymore. Like creating reminders or the shopping list integration etc.

    I just want Google Assistant back.

  • Cybersteel@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    The trick that they don’t tell you is that you don’t own your soul, it belongs to god while the body is owned by the state. It’s a reason why in most places suicide is a crime, you’re damaging the state’s property.