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Comment by halapro | Hacker News Reader

> It's not core to their business

You're not thinking ahead. AI isn't just chat bots and image editing. I want to tell my phone:

    I'm road tripping to XYZ tomorrow, 10 am to 5 pm.

and have my phone become a guide for the day, including stops it knows I like and hotel in my price range with the amenities it knows I need. If I get hungry it just slips in a stop wherever I ask.

This can come as an "everything app" or it can be a "new OS". Either way it will change how people interact with their phone.

If Android becomes this OS, which it may very well happen, iOS is toast. Apple's branding moat isn't that deep.

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I do this by hand and always will.

The moment this is automated and overseen by an AI implementation it'll turn into a marketing game like SEO did. You'll end up staying at the hotel which spends the most money on getting itself into the training data and forcing reviews on people immediately before the stay is up.

It's bad enough already. But I do not want someone making decisions for me on that and booking things, which is the only uplift that an AI implementation can give over the current situation.

It's a race to the bottom. Nothing more.

>You'll end up staying at the hotel which spends the most money on getting itself into the training data and forcing reviews on people immediately before the stay is up

...and how does your "by hand" process solve this problem? You are influenced by the same SEO crap regardless of AI intervention.

You are presented the SEO crap, but make your own decisions.

It's the difference between buying the top sponsored result on an online marketplace vs. reading reviews and deciding between products.

Because I can spot a turd a mile away.

I think that sounds like an incredible feature, but like so many things my phone can already do I'd never actually use it. I just don't want to become someone who does what their phone suggests.

Plus I have a partner and friends, so unless we all want to follow my phone's instructions it's not going to work.

You still have friends? You're going to be left behind mate, that's valuable time you could be spending talking to LLMs and vibe coding

That's the neat thing about suggestions: You don't have to follow them.

It should easily be able to understand a user's personality well enough to know how to manipulate them. E.g., 4 suggestions that user avoids directing user to the remaining 5th location that wasn't suggested.

How do you find those 5 locations? You open Google Maps and search for them. Too bad the app already selects 4 places to show you and hide the 5th.

So often I look for a business but Google Maps won't show it because it has no reviews. An AI assistant wouldn't change that, as long as it's still interactively programmable (i.e. give me 5 options, I'll pick 3)

Let’s not mince words.

If my device is “suggesting” a hotel or restaurant, or wherever, that’s advertising.

Advertising is largely self-praise.

And self praise is no recommendation.

Or perhaps I misunderstood, and you were suggesting ignoring the recommendations of one’s travel companions.

In my area lots of smaller accommodations don't show up on Google Maps already because they're not sold via OTA and Google can't earn their share.

1. Open Google Maps

2. Search "hotel"

3. Pick the first one

4. See "sponsored" just before the first link to a third party

If my phone ever starts not clearly separating "editorial content" and advertisements, it won't remain my phone for long.

There’s no “if” to it. LLM-driven features will be monetized. Investors/shareholders will insist.

You do realize that Google Maps prioritizes what's displayed on the map based on corporate relationships & money exchanged, right?

Most people do not use most of the features in their phones. But those features exist because all of the features are used by some people.

I'm not arguing that the feature wouldn't be used at all, just that I believe I'm fairly typical in not using clever phone features. It'd be used by a small number of people but that wouldn't make a noticeable change in marketshare if Android had it and iOS didn't.

To be honest, there probably isn't any feature of a phone OS would make a difference these days. People have decided which camp they're in and they're not going to change.

I saw a video of a Chinese phone that did something like that. Their implementation was a privacy and security nightmare but basically it shared a active feed of your screen with an LLM and would literally tap, type and swipe to achieve your objective. Like order these oodles from this app, it would only interrupt it's actions at payment processing screens.

Looked really cool and like the AI I've always imagined.

This is why Apple (and Google) is in a privileged position to tackle this issue at the OS level. If you currently trust your OS, then having a local agent use your apps wouldn't be terribly different (prompt injection risk aside)

Maybe rising up against the machines will come to be what finally unites humanity.

Then we can get on with exploring the galaxy.

Butlerian jihad.

Do you actually want that built into the OS? To me, this is an app but an invasion of privacy if it’s integrated into the OS.

After having given Openclaw a try as my "personal assistant" for a day when traveling, I 100% want this to be one possible way I can interact with my computer going forward.

Of course it's failed hilariously in many instances, is currently not private (I want local inference before giving it access to anything material, or it'll indeed be a privacy nightmare), and crashes all the time, but the fact that a (not yet) walking, talking CVE can do a better job at this than one of the most wealthy corporations in the world after several years of trying should give them some serious pause.

The “failing hilariously” bit is critical for this road-tripping use case.

It’s only going to take one bad suggestion that leaves someone in a dangerous situation to lose faith in simply handing over a whole day’s itinerary to an LLM. Honestly that can go so bad very easily.

We are decades into the GPS navigation era and I still don’t trust the route my vehicle suggests. I have been burned so many times that we literally still compare routes from different providers for a new trip.

> I have been burned so many times that we literally still compare routes from different providers for a new trip.

I heard this often but what has been the issue in practice? The worst that happened to me is Google Maps suggesting I cross a bridge that was washed away by the last typhoon, but that's hardly Google's fault.

Only in very remote places has Google Maps failed me, at least for driving directions (for trails it's another story...)

> It’s only going to take one bad suggestion that leaves someone in a dangerous situation

I feel like if one bad suggestion can leave somebody in a dangerous situation, many other things must have failed before, such as informing oneself of the general condition of roads in a given place and the current season, having a fallback plan in case digital navigation fails or a road is unexpectedly closed etc.

You expect the human to do all the actual work of planning the trip, but leave the only interesting parts to the LLM?

If you are doing all that, why do you need an AI?

Are you sure a tool that a tool that

> failed hilariously in many instances, is currently not private, and crashes all the time, a (not yet) walking, talking CVE

Is actually doing a better job than not doing any of that at all? This isn’t a life or death situation where something is better than nothing out of desperation. Sometimes if you can’t do it right it’s better to not do it at all. Better to wait for the full meal instead of having a “slop snack”.

I can do a terrible job at transplanting brains in robotic bodies. Terrible. Which is more than any company can do so yay?

Some things are worse than nothing in terms of quality or liability.

Yes, it's significantly better than nobody doing any of this for me, and the important thing for the purpose of this prediction is that the error rate still seems to be going down exponentially with time.

> This isn’t a life or death situation where something is better than nothing out of desperation.

That's exactly where it would make sense to try a new thing then, no?

> I can do a terrible job at transplanting brains in robotic bodies.

Sounds like a much more high stakes activity than telling me factoids around my travel itinerary, so I agree that we shouldn't have you run the neurosurgery department yet, yes.

Disregarding for a moment whether that's what HN-greybeards want or not, being behind in this area doesn't necessarily preclude Apple from catching up later. There's enough of a market that they can buy it from one of Google's competitors if they have to.

Can you not already do nearly that right now with Gemini on any device, iOS or not? I just gave a similar prompt to Gemini. It activated Gemini's "personal intelligence" feature and gave me the kind of highly personalized itinerary and advice you just suggested. It's not quite as seamless as being built directly into the OS, but I actually prefer it this way -- it's mildly sandboxed for safety while still giving me almost everything you just described if I want it. I certainly wouldn't switch away from my iPhone just to remove that sandboxing.

It doesn't even need to be coming from a single AI vendor either. For instance, I can already use Grok's voice mode inside our Model Y to add stops along the route if we're hungry.

I get what you want, its pretty sophisticated and yes probably a huge added value if it works reliably.

And there is no fucking way I want that in my life or my family's lives, ever. I will fight this very actively, with my wallet, voting and voice. Thats far beyond 1984 and at this point, in 2026, we know all that info will be weaponized against me, will try to manipulate me into decisions I would not do otherwise, for ads and other purposes. Also, it removes a lot of joy from one's life with discovering places and just being an adult and deciding for oneself, but that can be subjective.

If I dare to speak out, if I dare to disagree with official opinions, if I dare to have higher morals than those at the power at given moment. Look at all the shit happening even former bastion of democracy - US. Do you really think this is the bottom? We/You are still far from that and who knows if you bounce back. Past performance doesnt indicate future and all that.

Even when I am well shielded in proper bastion of true democracy and freedom - Switzerland in my case, nobody is immune. EU hates additional freedoms Swiss have and push hard for their dissolution, a reminder in their heart how better a very diverse European country can be run compared to mess EU is. US, at least current gov, hates this place too based on their moves.

What is diverse about Switzerland?

Isn’t it largely made up of Swiss, Germans, Italians, and Portuguese?

Diversity of nationality isn't the only type of diversity.

It’s not real helpful to say that and also provide no examples as to what diversity could mean in this context.

Its not really helpful to leave snarky comments in bad taste neither, is it. I suggest you read up a bit on this country, its history (I mean proper history not some primitive blahs on qanon level) and educate yourself, its not that hard or long if you care about the topic.

You're here, right? How much of your life is already stored on digital devices one warrant away from the state?

I read your comment as someone from the 80s complaining about digitalization and it all applied. And yet here we are, my WHOLE photo library on my phone, most of communication with everyone on my phone, and AI isn't even part of it.

Thats your phone, I have no cloud storage and no most of my photos are not on my phone. Its not my first nor second account here, I don't care about some meaningless reward points. Same goes for everything else, very little of my life is stored digitally and connected/shared to internet. I see simply no reason for that, not cruising on some paranoia.

Its a fight worth fighting or behavior to adhere to, for me. Natural and logical. You seemingly gave up, thats fine as long as you are happy with your choices and consequences.

> and have my phone become a guide for the day,

Why would you ever want to do that? Why wont' you stop and live life for a moment?, stop delegating stuff to your phone, especially when it comes to personal trips. Really bleak, this "always optimizing stuff" thing, really, really bleak. Tech-bro culture has done a good one to mainstream culture, because I see the same mindset seeping through to mainstream life.

I travel a lot and it's extremely time consuming. I don't even do much research beforehand anymore. I really wish I got a notification like "I know you're heading that way, how about this waterfall? It only adds 15 minutes of driving."

The reality is that I do not enjoy at all sorting through tickets and booking emails and apps, I just want to ask my phone "show me tonight's booking" and then hand the phone to the hotel's front desk.

There's so much an assistant can do and Siri is just so far from it.

I don't know about you, but manually trawling trip advisor and comparing hotel pricing and quality doesn't constitute "living life" for me.

It doesn't, but I'd rather book a hotel with full confidence and go to a restaurant that will be actually open, given all the information that is available to me at the time of planning, than having my trip ruined by a dumb bot because it cannot tell imagination from reality. All you get is "you're absolutely right".

Yeah what I do when I'm on a holiday is just walk out and see what's around, what places look good and have a good vibe. Maybe then check their rating but usually I don't bother do do even that. I'm not a minmaxer, I care more about living in the moment.

I do have pretty bad ADHD though and as such I thrive on chaos and hate planning so there's that...

Even if that worked, how do you know it will choose the stops you like and not the ones that paid Apple more to be featured?

How much data about you does an application like that need to store? Do you really think it can be stored and processed locally or will it have to go to some server that's a secret court order away - or a bribe away - from leaking it?

And last, why do you think a LLM - which is what "AI" means this year - can do that?

Oh and last last thing, honest guv, do read the chapter in Accelerando where the main character loses his smart glasses and is basically crippled because he can't remember anything on his own. (Don't ask an "AI" for a summary because Stross books aren't as popular as React and it will make a mish mash of all he has ever published, I just checked.)

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