John Herrman has written a great article for NYMag today about one of the most popular proposed uses of AI: content summarization. We all need things summed up, right? Everyone is overly busy and bombarded with knowledge. At the very least, it appears to be the consensus across all AI-related tech companies.
The difficulty is that AI-generated summaries aren't usually very informative. Aside from the obvious joke applications, such as an AI summary of the Mt. Everest climb on the digital hiking guide AllTrails that was so gamified it was later removed, Herrman points out that Gmail's email summaries frequently leave out vital information such as a birthday party date, and Apple Intelligence's text message summaries can be bizarre and impersonal.