Andrew Melder

I spent a little bit of time this morning with Sesame, a demo conversational AI service. I’m fascinated by these, both from a technology point of view but also thinking about the societal viewpoint as these AI services and voices get closer to mimicking human conversations.

In many ways, the future outlined in the movie Her is already here.

Like many, I’m unsure about the long term effects of this movement. On one hand, many are genuinely losing the art of conversation in a screen dominated world. Among many other scenarios, conversational AI may provide an output for connection that some people may struggle with.

However, it’s that emotional connection that makes it also a concern.

As I was talking this morning to a voice named Maya, I could imagine how the barrier of “I’m talking to a machine” can quickly dissipate and give way to an emotional connection, like you really are talking to a human.

This brings up many concerns; not only psychological, but also the privacy and sensitivity of such personal conversations being managed through private companies with motivations not aligned with our basic human needs.

But whatever I think about this is overridden by the knowledge that these conversational AI’s are already in use; likely far more frequently than many of us may realise.

And despite this, somehow my natural position is to see this as a good thing for those who truly could use these. In a world increasingly fractured and disconnected despite unprecedented worldwide technical connectivity, is any form of emotional connection and outlet automatically a bad thing despite the risks?

A few notes following on from my last post around the first 48 hours with GrapheneOS on my Pixel 9 Pro.

• I setup my work profile (using Shelter) successfully and logged into my work accounts without issues. Curiosity I have now is since I know the folks managing Intune for the company, to ask and find out exactly what information can they see from the phone on this OS compared to stock.

• MFA and banking apps didn’t have any issues either, although some of them are reaching out to the Play Integrity API (something not really needed by these apps but GrapheneOS detects and notifies you).

• I’ve gone back and forth on location settings. The GrapheneOS team are working on improvements to their system and understand it’s still not as accurate and quick as Google’s offerings. For myself, it is good enough but I’m yet to test it out on an active drive.

• Google Maps or Waze are still the best mapping options for Android by a LONG shot.

• I’ve still had those “what is the point of all this if I’m using Google services” moments over the past week. This interview with Signal’s Meredith Whittaker at SXSW this week reinforced why I’m looking to reduce my reliance on Google and reclaim some privacy; even if it is slowly.

• Been playing around with Key Mapper to have a hardware shortcut to ChatGPT (used for alt text for photos) mapped to a long press of the vol up + down buttons.

• The default Vanadium browser is very good, but I’m trying Vivaldi browser for my Firefox replacement. I miss extension support on the mobile though.

• I’m surprised at how much I’m using the GrapheneOS stock camera app over the Pixel Camera app. It’s my default on the double press power button shortcut; however it could use a better lens/zoom selection UI.

• There’s still occasional weirdness with my Pixel Watch; mainly sometimes after a reboot it will send calls to the watch even when I pick it up on the phone.

On a seperate note, I got a new case and matte screen protector during the week. I think it’s been a good distraction as I try and get used to the fingerprint quirks with the matte protector over my previous clear protector. As a result, I’ve been way more annoyed at the fingerprint issues than anything at the OS level.