Ask Paul: March 17 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Here’s another great set of reader questions to ponder as we kick off our last weekend in Mexico City (on this trip) a bit early.
Being Brave
Zeppelyn56 and JustMe ask:

Paul, like yourself I have switched to Brave as my main browser but the the only thing I'm not satisfied with is Brave search. Have you used it much and how are you finding the results displayed. The main results always seem to concentrate on discussion whereas all I want is an answer to my search query.

Right. I don’t use Brave Search because, like Bing, I find it to be inferior to Google Search. This is one of those areas where trying to move off Google for all the right reasons hurts more than helps---Google Maps and Google Photos, too---and so I just suck it up and use it.
The cost(s) of AI
will asks:

Does AI stand for Absolutely Indolent? 

:) I saw a quote from Microsoft that, sure, its work AI may make mistakes, but they’re fun mistakes. I’m paraphrasing.

Like you I watched the Microsoft Copilot announcement, and I agree it is a good name.

Yes. And let’s pause on that for a moment. Copilot is a good name, and while I have this weird nostalgia for the name Cortana, I feel like this is the right way forward. It’s something Microsoft can use everywhere and it will make sense to people.

However, what came to mind when I was watching this, and the Google one as well, is how lazy people might become (if they are willing to pay, question on that later) in doing their work?  CoPilot can create an email reply, draft a proposal based on X information, create a slide deck with X & Y information.  I get it, I even think it is a pretty impressive, but imagine getting emails and documents that are well outside of what someone would normally do.  Does this make us better if some program does the work for me? 

Some time ago in an Ask Paul I referenced an episode of Deadwood that I am positive I saw and have strong memories of, but when I went back to find it, it was nothing like I remembered. Anyway, in my version of this episode, there were telegram lines coming into town and the main character, standing on his deck, drinking coffee, asked what they were for. So his underling explained it, that this thing would let people communicate immediately. And he basically why on earth anyone would want that. After all, you need time to formulate an answer.

AI is the 21st-century version of that, the thing that will make us old-timers tell younger people that they have no idea how easy they have it. How we used to actually have to write entire Word documents, and muddle our way through figuring out how a presentation works. Or whatever.

And I share your cynicism on this matter. But in the vein of it being easier to give advice than to take it, think about it like this: we have wasted so much time in our lives figuring out tools and struggling to communicate using them, that we’ve lost sight of the fact that this isn’t ...