OPINION: AI inherently lacks empathy and humanity, but some examples are more startling and depressing than others. Beware: Bad news summarised by AI is in your future.
One of the key Apple Intelligence tools coming this autumn is the ability to summarise your notifications. In most cases, the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff will save people time.
Lord knows, we’re bombarded with so much across dozens of apps. So we could use a personal secretary giving us just the top-line information.
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However, for matters of the heart, the feature can miss the mark. This week we learned of a poor fella who’d been dumped by text, on his birthday no-less.
New York-based software engineer Nick Spreen learned of his relationship ending via an Apple Intelligence summary on the lockscreen of his iPhone 15 Pro running the iOS 18.1 beta.
He was not let down gently.
The lock-screen notification summary simply read: “No longer in a relationship; wants belongings from the apartment.”
Spreed shared the message in a social media post, adding it was: “for anyone who’s wondered what an Apple Intelligence summary of a breakup text looks like.”
It’s quite startling this is where we’re at now; enabling artificial intelligence to distil down intimate communications into something so emotionless and lacking in humanity.
Imagine if this was worse news than a simple breakup which, judging by Nick’s comments to Ars Technica, he was philosophical about.
“Dave dead. Hit by car.”
“Got cancer. Six months to live.”
“You no longer have a job.”
Because this will be happening once you give Apple Intelligence carte blanche to give you notes on your messages without any human-like preface of “are you sitting down?” or “I hate to break this to you.”
Yet somehow it’s entirely in-line with the way AI is being implemented across consumer tech. Need a piece of artwork that would take a real artist time and effort to create? just write a five word text prompt. Need to craft a love letter to someone who want to express your feelings to? Just write any old crap, pick a tone and ask the AI to sort it out. Spotted someone out and about in a unique outfit? Point Google at them and Circle to Search. You too can steal their individuality in a few clicks. Want to write song to convey your sense of hopelessness about the state of human communication? Just ask AI to whip up some lyrics and backing for you.
Even if you do take the time to craft what you feel is the most gentle and thoughtful break-up text or email, imaginable, the person on the other end is going to have it summarised for them by AI; removing any context, feeling, emotion or humanity.
“No longer in a relationship; wants belongings from the apartment.”
What we’re heading towards is content generated via AI, shared by humans, and interpreted by AI for the easier consumption of other humans; filtered of personality and authenticity.
We will become mere conveyors of articificially manifested code, not creators of words, art, and music. Humanity will be the conduit for sharing the hollow, artificially ultra-processed, and downright ordinary.
And those who still to their guns and insist on actually creating art and not generating content won’t be able to sustain a living doing so anymore.
As Mira Mutari, dastardly former technology chief slash creative job destroyer at Open AI, said: “Some creative jobs maybe will go away, but maybe they shouldn’t have been there in the first place if the content that comes out is not a very high quality.”
That’s what these people are missing in their quest to completely remove individuality from our world in the name of god-knows-what. It’s not always about the quality of the end product; it’s the effort, the personality, the feeling and the unique humanity that goes into genuinely creating it.
AI is, quite simply, taking that away.
“No longer in a relationship; wants belongings from the apartment.”
