AI Is the Interface From the Human to the Machine World
Think of AI as a personal concierge to end the tedium of technology systems.
Right now, we as humans are living through a huge transition moment in relationship to technology. It is the equivalent of a toddler learning to walk: a bit clumsy, stumbling often, running smooth for a few steps then falling flat on their face.
While I definitely have my concerns about the toxic stew currently being brewed with AI, surveillance and autocratic power, if we forget that for a moment and zoom into our day-to-day lives, AI is about to completely transform our relationship to information technology…and give us back some of our humanity in the process. And for those of us interested in the expression of our humanity, it is wise to be ahead of the curve.
But first a bit of broad stroke history: The dawn of personal computing, accelerated into full force with the ubiquity of the internet and small "smart" devices, promised people more ease, output, productivity and wider horizons. But, more recently as internet technology has become the primary mode of communication in nearly all socio-political domains: government, finance, social life — we’ve started to hit a stumbling point — a growth obstacle which shows a practical limit to how far we can go under the present paradigm.
You experience this as digital frustration. Your email inbox has become unmanageable. Your WhatsApp groups overwhelm you. You spend 2 minutes getting your passwords to match before submitting the form only to realise there is another error and your password fields are now blank. Low-tech chatbots pretend to be human for one question before giving up and showing you buttons to click. Let’s not even mention automated telephone menu systems. There is even a term for this in academia: technostress.¹
I believe that AI holds the solution. That these digital limits are old relics of a primitive, technological past, and that with AI’s help, they will die a quick death.
And while there are many challenges to face around the moral and environmental implications of its growth, in regards to the “human-machine interface”, AI could settle a major problem for us, and this could enable a whole new era of human creative proliferation through technology.
To understand this, first we must understand why scenarios like the one above are so frustrating. Why does the autocomplete never get it quite right? Why even as I type this do I have to backspace 20 times every paragraph to fix all the little typos? The reason is this: We are human beings trying to interface with digital entities.
As humans, we speak a language of sounds, words, ideas. We experience analogue movements of our limbs, facial muscles, eyes, gestures, postures and poses. We perceive through stereo, hi-depth, wide field, full-colour eyes, positional sonic-detection system ears, a chemical analyser nose capable of astounding sensitivity and memory correlation, and touch and possibly heart-field detection systems.²
But to interface with the digital landscape, we are forced to use a small set of tiny plastic slabs (a keyboard) and a 30cm window, (or smaller on mobile), and pretend knobs, buttons,and windows in order to relate, move, express, discover in this digital space.
When we use these primitive "User Interface" (UI) tools, it is we who incur the burden of translating our complex human intention into the narrow portal of the machine interface. It is this very attempt to force our vast imaginative power into such a tiny doorway that is the cause of our “technostress” — like a sprinter trying to breathe through a narrow straw.
The potential of the sort of AI coming up over the horizon is that it will become the link between the Human and the Machine Worlds, like a personal concierge at a 5-star hotel, who makes the complicated thing you want simply happen with nothing but a few courteous sentences exchanged. By removing the friction in navigating the digital landscape, we will return to the superior user experience of being human that the past offered us, but with all the advantages of the digital age.
When you reflect on it, the current User Experience (UX) of a piece of technology actually falls quite short of the analog, in-person experiences it’s replaced. To illustrate this point, think of the example of checking your bank balance. Let's consider it from a UX/User Experience perspective.
In the past, you would pop into your local bank and approach a fellow human. They would greet you cordially and offer to help. You would tell them in whatever style of language was natural to you that you would like to know your bank balance.
If we go way back, to our grandparents’ generation, that might be it. They would know you by face, know your name and would just check their ledger and come back with the answer and a smile. Max points for UX.
In my youth, the technology up-ramp had already begun. When I went into the bank (which was just a minute walk away in my home town), I would present them with a little cardboard card that had my bank account number handwritten on it. They would look it up on their computer and I’d get my answer. Still quite a pleasant UX…and they had lollipops too.
Compare that experience to now. Ok, you no longer need to go into the bank. One big point for Information Technology. But you need to get out your screen — for the 1000th time today — and then: tap, swipe, look straight at the camera — oh it didn't recognise your face! Enter your code — wait — now it recognises your face!
Ok, now to find the banking app. It wants your code again — and now the fourth letter of your passcode — no that’s not your password…
Now it says you need to upgrade this version of the app. But your phone’s Operating System doesn’t support the new version, so you need to update your OS first. You can’t do that on cellular data so you have to wait until you are home in the evening. But now your phone doesn’t have the space to download the update...
This is human-machine interface insanity, and it is the world we live in presently, the transition phase I spoke of earlier. Do you, as well, find that these kind of moments are escalating?
One recent study³ reveals that ‘67% of customers report increased frustration with authentication processes and technical issues’ preferring the old days of traditional banking when there is a problem to resolve.
Clearly, information technology has created many advantages, but as those advantages have dominated life-on-earth, the need to interface with them has increased as well. This is where AI comes in.
AI, and its many components, allow us to speak the human language yet still interface with the machine world. We see this most clearly with the Large Language Models (LLMs) like Claude and ChatGPT. You literally speak to them, even clumsily so — and they are able to scour the network of online knowledge encapsulated within them and respond to you in your own human language.
Very much on the horizon is their ability to interface with websites, and even your desktop screen. I suspect by the time you are reading this article, even these current bleeding-edge applications will be normal course for many people.
Some people I speak with fear that we are giving AI too much control, relying on it too much. While there is a point of reflection here (Can you get home without your map app?), I personally think the felt experience of integrating AI will be one of decoupling from the excessively close relationship with technology. AI will not be another technical tool to get your head around. It will be more like a ‘teammate’⁴: a personal concierge that helps us access the many advantages and opportunities of the Post-Information Age, while freeing us to be humans again. …Hopefully before all of our thumbs fall off!
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