The Hotel Model of AI

What I like best about Keith Teare‘s latest essay, Who Owns The Front Door to AI? If it isn’t you, its game over, is that it sounds like he’s setting up the case for personal AI.

But he’s not. He’s describing how our AI-assisted lives will get sucked through better interfaces deep into one or more of AI’s giant castles, as “the chat interface replaces the browser as the primary user interface for computing on the web.”

His case is not pretty, but it is clear, thoughtful, knowing, and well-described. He concludes, “Bottom line: Winners will own a trusted front door with standards and auditing and settlements behind it—and help teams actually change how they work and consumers find what they want without dethroning content owners. Everyone else will keep shipping demos into a narrowing feed.”

Note that the winners are giants. You and I? We’re just consumers. Our agency in this system will be no greater than what these giants allow us. Each giant will be (hell, already is) a hotel with a know-it-all concierge who can get us what we want, within the hotel’s confines. But the space is not ours. So, what Cluetrain said in 1999—

—will remain untrue.

And the only way our reach will exceed their grasp is with our own personal AI. Simple as that.