What Will We Want From our AI? - Knowmail

Computers are advancing in leaps and bounds and are increasingly displaying attributes of practical Artificial Intelligence: they may not yet clash with astronauts, but they definitely take over many daily tasks that used to depend entirely on human brainpower. One area where this is felt is knowledge work tools: just look at Google's uncanny ability to figure what search results you really need despite your ill-formed and misspelled query… and as this trend continues to accelerate, you can't help but think: what capabilities would we want to surrender to this AI? What should it do for us – and what would we rather it didn't? Because if we don't discuss this, the software vendors will push at us whatever they think of, whether we like it or not! I'm not talking about better spell checking, mind you; that is happening. But we can expect far more powerful stuff.