Ads for consumer A.I. are struggling to imagine how the product could improve your day — unless you’re a barely functioning idiot.
In my favorite Meta A.I. ad, a woman tells her boyfriend that she’s excited to have him meet her parents — before impishly mentioning that her father is a thermodynamicist at NASA. The befuddled boyfriend rushes home, phone in hand. “Hey Meta,” he asks. “What the heck is a thermodynamicist?”
Over the next 24 hours, our protagonist talks to Meta’s chatbot obsessively. He talks to Meta as he settles into the back seat of a rideshare. He talks to Meta while walking with his morning coffee, swaddled in an oversize hoodie. He talks to Meta while shaving for work. And when the night of the dinner finally arrives, he stands in front of the father and, looking stricken, reels off a line about how excited he is to discuss “the transition from liquid fuel to hybrid propellants.”
The vision of life here is bizarre. Why is our protagonist rushing everywhere, like a perpetually late college student? Why doesn’t he ask his girlfriend what a thermodynamicist is? (She should know: That’s what her dad does.) Better yet, why can’t he just have a conversation with the father about it, like a normal person with a capacity for being curious about someone else’s life?
This commercial’s “Looney Tunes” vibe is not a bug: This is how Silicon Valley has tried to sell artificial intelligence to consumers, at least on television. In commercial after commercial, humans are oblivious, enfeebled, barely functioning idiots beset by more tasks, stimuli and demands on their time than anyone could reasonably handle. In another ad, a man finds that his cat has eaten his daughter’s pet goldfish, Frank. He wants to buy another but can’t remember where he got the first one. Enter Meta. The chatbot alerts him that the store is closing, so the man scampers to his car — but when he reaches the store, he can’t remember what Frank even looked like. Again, he petitions Meta for help. I suppose Meta is meant to be saving the child, and therefore the father, from unhappiness, but what it actually seems to be doing is sparing them any feelings that might lend meaning to their lives.
The most galling ad features a woman who is hosting a “Moby Dick” book club. It’s unclear whether she has actually read any of the book. What is clear is that she doesn’t have the time or desire to think about it. No worry: Meta gives her a Melville-for-Dummies gloss on what the white whale represents (the vastness of life and meaninglessness of existence), and even suggests some conversation starters.
The people in these commercials are motivated by laziness and incuriosity, even when it comes to the most intimate of concerns. In a commercial for Google’s Gemini, a father explains that his daughter’s dream is to be just like the Olympic hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. He wants to help his daughter send her a letter. “I’m pretty good with words, but this has to be just right,” the man says. “So Gemini, help my daughter write a letter telling Sydney how inspiring she is.” The unintentionally hilarious subtext here is that McLaughlin-Levrone would receive a letter from a young fan, find the prose lacking and throw it in the trash; the less funny assumption is that someone could be more moved by an A.I. letter than by the unpolished emotion of an enthusiastic child.