AA few weeks ago, the Verge reported on a startup making a device called the Rabbit R1, which is supposed to be “an AI-powered gadget that can use your apps for you.” I’m not especially interested in the device itself or whether it can actually do what the company promises. Apparently it “can control your music, order you a car, buy your groceries, send your messages, and more, all through a single interface” with the help of a “large action model” supposedly patterned after large language models, though that makes no conceptual sense and just seems like an effort to cash in on the buzz around LLMs. (Also, why do people find “controlling their music” so taxing?)

In the promotional video for the Rabbit, the company’s CEO Jesse Lyu explains that the company’s mission is to “create the simplest computer, something so intuitive that you don’t need to learn how to use it.” That sounds convenient enough — a complementary inversion of the “I know kung fu” fantasy from The Matrix — but actually knowing how to use things and why they work as they do is a good way of making sure you know what you are using them for, and to direct your usage toward purposes you actively choose. It’s not necessarily advantageous to not know how to do anything, or to be the sorcerer’s apprentice who has no idea how the magic works and ultimately finds themselves at its mercy. If you don’t learn how to use something, it’s often because it has become the means of using you.

https://robhorning.substack.com/p/a-delightful-intuitive-companion