The report also says the feature doesn’t make a transcript, nor does it store the audio; it instead gathers key datapoints from what is said to include in the summary, deleting all the remaining information in the process. You can have the feature working all day, on-demand, or only in specific locations. The idea seems to be to provide some kind of actionable summary of events and key conversations that take place during the day. I imagine the subtext is to digitize as much as possible of your daily existence as Apple thinks you will be comfortable with to create the kind of datapoints contextual AI requires if it is going to help with your life.
The case for it
That sounds fine, up to a point — the idea that a digital assistant will be able to recognize key events, moments, and requirements to remind us of them, act on them, or suggest next steps concerning them is certainly a notion that’s gained currency in tech circles. They see it as augmenting human achievement, enabling people to become more productive, more efficient, and capable of doing more with less effort. At least, that’s part of the argument.
What is wrong with that (other than concerns over privacy or a desire not to have one’s entire waking life transformed into a series of datapoints that can be measured, tested, or surveyed by entities outside of our control), right? If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, at least, not until times change and what didn’t need to be hidden in the past becomes something that must be shrouded in future.
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