Let me talk to my algorithms
Generative AI (LLMs) hasn't worked for me yet, especially not as a digital assistant with a conversational interface.
But I can see such a thing working exceptionally well as a translation layer between me and the most prevalent algorithms of my daily life.
I'd love to have a conversation with my Spotify algorithm:
- Chill it down by about 20%
- Prioritize this artist higher
- Create a new playlist with songs I've never heard before based on these two playlists
- More oomph!
The DJ-assistant doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to make a change, and explain basically how that was done. As long as you can continuously tweak your sorting algorithms in a non-destructive (i.e. fearless) manner, your 'algorithmic literacy' will keep improving.
Conversational AI gives the general public a plain language way to understand and interface with algorithms that are otherwise only understandable to <1% of the population.
Of course, Spotify won't open up their algorithms to make this possible to do with anything outside of their self-biased control. Nor will Twitter or Reddit, but thankfully we've got open alternatives like Mastodon or Lemmy to freely tinker with, and at least the latter is starting to embrace more advanced sorting algorithms that could be worth re-tweaking for fun and (knowledge-) profit.
Another good candidate for prototyping this thing might be Tumblr, which recently open sourced the majority of their algorithms.
I dunno, maybe there's something there. If you see it, please feel free to make this idea your own!
Oh, and I'd only trust an open source and local-first AI assistant to insert itself between me and my most used applications, obviously.