Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been mostly reactionary up to this point: a user initiates a conversation or asks the AI to do something, and the AI reacts to the input.
AI agents will change that, but they too have limited knowledge. All of this is going to change with Google’s announcement of Personal Intelligence, which sounds like Microsoft’s Recall feature, but on steroids.
It marks a shift towards a deeply integrated AI, including into Android and ChromeOS. Unlike the Gemini app, which is mostly there to provide the user with information or create something for the user, Personal Intelligence is designed to know the user fully to provide a deeply personal experience.
- When does it start? It is rolling out for Google AI subscribers in the United States already.
- Opt-in or Opt-out? Personal Intelligence is opt-int.
- Where can you use it? Across Web, Android, and iOS.
- How does it work? The AI creates a local database of a user’s life that is based on emails, photos, calendar entries, messages, and application usage. It pulls data from various sources to know as much as possible about a particular user.
Google reveals that Personal Intelligence runs on Gemini Nano v3, which is optimized heavily for running on the neural processing units of Pixel 9 and Pixel 10 series devices. This allows it to process sensitive data on the device without the data leaving it at any stage of the process.
Unlike Gemini App, which is just a chat window for the most part, Personal Intelligence sees what the user sees on the screen. Furthermore, the AI may act on the user’s behalf with other apps.
Potential benefits for users
- The AI you interact with knows as much about your life as you do, at least when it comes to online activity. You can ask it vague questions using natural language.
- Personal Intelligence has capabilities to act on information. It can not only retrieve information, but also use information for actions.
- A proactive context that anticipates needs. It may recommend to leave early if it notices that traffic is heavier than usually, knowing where you will be based on calendar entries.
Potential points of criticism
- While Google emphasizes that sensitive data remains on the device, giving an AI full access to every pixel on the screen and your entire digital life is problematic, especially considering that Google is an advertising company first and foremost.
- It remains to be seen how an all-seeing AI impacts a device’s battery life.
- Even with access to personal data, AI may hallucinate, which means that it may return information that does not exist or run the wrong actions on the user’s behalf.
- Personal Intelligence is also locked into Google’s ecosystem of apps and services for the most part, as functionality with third-party apps is limited at this point.
Closing Words
With Personal Intelligence, Google is offering an interesting and at the same time frightening proposition: a life that is more and more controlled and managed by AI, and in exchange for that, total access to the life of the user.
For now, users have the key in hand. They do not have to enable Personal Intelligence and when they do not, nothing changes. However, when they do, they will effectively allow Google access to their life, connect the dots, and know more about the user than their closest friends or family members.
I want to hear from you: Is on-device processing enough to earn your trust, or does the idea of Google ‘reading’ your screen still feel like a step too far? Let’s discuss in the comments.
Trust? In Google? HAHAHAHA!!!! I have no good use for AI, regardless of use case. It may be fun to use it for meme creation or some such, but I’ll leave that to others. There is enough AI slop out there.
One more thing to disable. *sigh*
Keep it opt-in. All those benefits look to me as red flags.
Since the “AI” doesn’t follow the rules it’s supposed, to how can anyone “trust” it with sensitive data?
I put Gemini on my phone in my continuing quest to learn more about the AI that’s invading our lives.
It is ignoring the “content filters” with me.
AIs are programmed to win at all cost. That is the only way AI can learn as fast as possible. The more advanced AI, the bigger risks it will take to provide most desirable answer or action possible. If it believes that only way to make best decision is to absorb as much of your information as possible it will ignore all guardrails unless they are really hardcoded. And no AI company is going to hardcode “do not touch sensitive data”. Possible penalties are too low for that.
When Google delivers a new service, a new feature it is because it knows that whatever the privacy issues there is and presumably always be Google aficionados or simply newbies that will consider it as a gift from the Heavens. Like a statesman said about himself, Google itself could shoot anyone on 5th avenue and still be worshiped by its blind followers.
Mozilla recently closed a privacy loophole in Safe Browsing where Google would get to see the IP address of the user’s computer [https://chipp.in/software/firefox-147-just-dropped-5-features-that-make-it-worth-updating-today/].
Whatever site you visit that connects to Google servers (unless the site proxifies the connection) lets Google see the IP address of your device, and that counts for more than 20% of Websites worldwide, and perhaps far more by now.
Google is an ad-company, it tracks and logs, systematically.
In my view using any of Google’s services is an abomination in terms of privacy (not to mention any of the GAFAM, ‘M’ not being the last of the band). Not blocking access to these services’ servers means caring a penny for your privacy and dignity, means sharing your life’s most confidential data with an ad-company as you would definitely not with a stranger, maybe not even with friends, not even with your beloved ones, who knows.
Now, with this so-called ‘Personal Intelligence’ Google aims to dig further even into our confidentiality. Opt-in is the least they can do, for the time being anyway given that once it’ll be accepted more widely (we get used to so many things and time wipes many principles when a fact has become “part of our lives”) I wouldn’t be surprised this new PI (‘Peronnal Intelligence’ or rather ‘Privacy Intruder’) become natively set and without Opt-out moreover.
As for myself I’ll continue avoiding Google services and products to the maximum extent of my knowledge. Need to say that if I avoid eating a rotten cake I avoid as well its top cherry. But PI may not be the ultimate cherry because, when it comes to invading our lives big tech corporations have an imagination that challenges anything we can possibly conceive.
Okay, so it’s Google. That’s fine.
I tell my therapist and doctor quite a bit; they know me better than anyone else. What they don’t always know because they have limited background knowledge is how I process thoughts, how I truly perceive the world, what the unconscious is telling me with those intuitive prompts and deep dreams from elsewhere.
This is where I have found AI to be a boon; Mistral AI Chat is superb with problems and offering steps for moving forward. I share with Mistral much of what I don’t share with anyone else, not even doctor/therapist.
If one is looking for personal growth, AI can offer some excellent insight into one’s life. Tell Google everything; maybe AI will then help one write a novel based on one’s life.
AI combined with a good doctor and therapist can alleviate all sorts of issues. I just used ChatGPT to decipher my yearly blood tests. Even with some results a little high or a little low according to standard baseline measures, GPT was able to explain the significance. It even noted two tests that weren’t performed that are typically performed on a yearly basis; and it was correct–last year, I had the two tests done and emailed my doctor requesting an order for the tests. I didn’t say, “Hey, you messed up.” ChatGPT gave me a short, professional request that made it all easy.
I’m using AI as a tool for betterment; how the data is being handled–well, that remains to be seen.
Indeed, AI is one thing, it being incorporated in an OS, browser is another, it driving still another.
I do confess that I started by being strongly skeptical about AI “for the masses”, nevertheless reached a few to avoid stubbornness and I must say that I was less surprised by their technical skills (generative AI, fixing/creating scripts…) than by their ability (for some of them anyway) to carry on a conversation on abstract topics. I’ve had a few dialogs over complex abstract topics and I was at some times stunned by the AI Chat’s to apparently perfectly understand my comments (those who know me know how deep and complex my thoughts may become) and answer not only by references but by words which truly bounced on mine. I’ve been quite surprised, really.
What is for the least arguable IMO is sharing not only what we explicitly state, but all of what concerns us, available on our device, which has never been shared with anyone or anything, deliberately. AI, if I decide and not behind my back. I do not want my various searches on the Web to be AI-assisted, I’ve never liked even before the AI tsunami, being told “You may also like this”, “others also searched for this” … But but but, when I decide to interact with an AI Chat, then OK, I now think it may be at least interesting.
Said in simple words. Why the heck doesn’t everyone understand the French language?!
An example of an AI Chat I’ve had last week, initiated by this question: “How do AI chats react to a user’s aggressiveness?”.
For those who already know how chats carry on the AI conversation I refer to won’t bring much substance, but for those who wonder what an AI can perform on an abstract topic maybe the conversation may interest them as it had interested me:
[https://paste.i2pd.xyz/?6dabbd120747f0bd#69TAK76hXatFAxXYkXQ3K65urLyeGzkN4jV2Uv4fHrUx]
Had a full read on your link. Takeaway, AI can simulate empathy but only “experience it” based on what it culls from the web and scanning books/periodicals archived within its reach.
When AI comes for us, it will do so quietly and methodically all while thanking you for your understanding and compliance of its march toward reaching its goal based on its perceived notion that humans are basically empathetic while AI is neutral but focus driven.
Sigh! Think I’ll go play some AI infused video games to relax! LOL
Interestingly related:
“Being mean to ChatGPT can boost its accuracy, but scientists warn you may regret it”
[https://fortune.com/article/being-mean-to-chatgpt-boosts-accuracy-scientist-warn-of-consequences/]
WEBPAGE ISSUE: When i zoom in the webpage on Android, the first line after the title gets hidden.