Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Reaction to "Enough AI copilots, we need AI HUD's" - i.e. Thought Provoking Ideas on Reframing the UI / UX of AI

I just read a very thought provoking blog post from Geoffrey Litt, based on some ideas pitched some 30-ish years ago by Mark Weiser

Blog Title: "Enough AI Copilots, We Need AI HUD's"

https://www.geoffreylitt.com/2025/07/27/enough-ai-copilots-we-need-ai-huds


My (Non-AI Powered) Summary, with additional spin on top
1) The industry at large is going about this all wrong!

2) The "me too" industry frenzy currently of just piling in on top of the "tasteless" (to paraphrase Steve Jobs) zombie train of building digital versions of Tom Riddle's horcrux-diary is stupid.  

    I'm with Mark on this - as those who've followed me for long enough know, I'm very much against all this "chat" and "agent" style crap that all the AI-TechBros are currently all still hyping up.

3) HCI + Interaction Design specialists/experts such as myself should really be stepping in and stepping up to meet this challenge head on - to get back in there to steer the ship as it were, instead of being backseat passengers to an almost certain trainwreck - by doing what we do best:

    a) Taking a step back, and asking the essential basic questions about what exactly we're trying to really achieve, and **WHY**...

    b) Crucially, not letting the existing framing cloud our judgement, and obscuring our own personal ethical + philosophical principles on the direction that we wish to steer technology in

4) What is it that we have to offer then?

   A) Show Don't Tell - If your tech is really that fancy, it doesn't need to be in our faces all the time. We shouldn't *need* to be constantly "conversing" with it, like micro-managing a third-rate annoying minion

   B) An Assistive Superpower - (Now where have we heard *that* before?  ;)    Yep, the emphasis here should be on the tech taking care of the mundane stuff, while using its strengths to highlight stuff we can't figure out as humans...

*NOW* we're talking.
  i) Harnessing tech to help people do what they couldn't otherwise do
  ii) Augmenting + Building Up, NOT Replacing + Subjugating!

These are indeed very much things that are right in my wheelhouse, and problems that I can get behind!  (Whereas the "AI" discourse to date has very much been a very alienating, and unpalatable soup of world-destroying slop that make me and countless others sick to our very core)

Thanks for the reminder Geoffrey!

 

As for the rest of us:   It's high time we started getting cracking, and righting this ship! There's lots of work to do!

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