Coming soon: Clippy Plus?

Turns out that all this “AI” hype might lead us down a very unexpected path:

Where I think this will be most transformative is in online productive tools. We are probably approaching a future where Microsoft unveils a legitimately awesome next-generation Clippy. It will help you make charts in Excel, suggest powerpoint presentation slides, and offer genre-specific writing advice. It will simplify a bunch of grinding, obnoxious tasks, providing good-enough solutions when that’s exactly what you need.

Quite apart from that prospect, this is a thoughtful piece about what “AI” can and can’t do and (by the by) why the Writers Guild of America are right to be on strike.

[Via Memex 1.1]