“Why would I ask a computer how to do anything?” My family could argue I do this all the time, especially if something piques my interest – I am not looking up information to prove what one of them said is correct, it is to find a citable source if I make use of it here later.
Asking for information, rather than just searching keywords, used to be the preserve of the search engine Ask Jeeves, later known as Ask.com, which accepted queries in natural language, the site picking the key words from the sentence. I did not know that Ask.com, since 2010 just an aggregator of results from other search engines, had only closed on 1st May 2026 – Jeeves had largely been dispatched with twenty years before.
If I want to look for something online, I prefer to be shown it. I certainly don’t need the computer to interpret it for me, for that will be my job. Research skills are far more than deciding whether certain words have been used lead to the correct answer, it is deciding whether a whole source is even relevant to begin with, something a computer cannot do without human input.
I am veering back into feeing crotchety about A.I., despite previously pronouncing myself bored of talking about it. But the wagon will keep going until all resources have been devoured, from concerns about data centres affecting water supplies, to the manufacturing of Random Access Memory (RAM) chips being prioritised towards equipping these centres at the expense of consumer products, an issue that won’t see demand being balanced by supply until 2027-28.
What concerns me is that the increased cost of computers, smartphones, TV streaming boxes and so on will not come down when RAM chips become more readily available. More RAM will still be needed than before if the expectation of these devices is to run A.I. programs locally, instead of acting as a terminal to send and receive results from a data centre. The gallop towards A.I.-centric services will irrevocably change the expectations of the devices we buy – I say this as someone who has never turned on “Apple Intelligence” on my iPhone 17, leaving me with a fast phone with a decent amount of RAM.
I am slowly realising is that the interface most often presented by A.I. programs, namely just asking your device to do something, could become the expected way to interact with it. Forget your keyboard, mouse, or your fingers on the screen, for the microphone may soon be all you need.
I already ended a previous article by saying, “I don’t know what point I want to make, as this is my reacting to something that doesn’t sound right, but what helps others to work changes how I would work, so therefore, I’m not doing it.” However, I wrote this in 2020 about preferring to use a keyboard when writing on a tablet computer, because my “daily driver” at that point was an iPad. That is just how I work, as trying to type on a tablet screen will become uncomfortable – writing longhand with pen and ink is preferable.
But I could never dictate my work into a computer, or ask it to edit my work. I might say a sentence in my own head before typing it, but attempting to say it out loud before typing it is just anathema to me. This may not have been the case when, in previous decades, the device of choice would have been a human secretary: the level of mutual understanding in talking to someone is much easier than talking at something that, no matter what you are sold, will not think.
I know I shouldn’t be so worried. I am using my computer for “productivity” purposes, not something general. People would rather talk to something if it feels enough like talking to someone, and if this is presented as a preference over choosing apps from a screen, or filling in details yourself, then ease of use will win every time. There is every possibility that Microsoft Copilot, introduced as an element of Windows, could supplant Windows altogether. What I want a computer for, as someone who retains a subscription to use a word processor program – Microsoft Word, like most other people – is a “specialty” case, in comparison to general consumer computer use. I just resent having to pay more for wanting that.
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