Judging by the near-infinite hype spewed about AI, its power is practically limitless: it's going to do all our work better and cheaper than we can do, replacing us at work, to name one example making the rounds. It's going to revolutionize everything from science to marketing, all the while reaping trillions of dollars in profits for those who own the AI tools, apps, etc.

All these extravagant claims make good clickbait, but let's set a higher standard: if AI is so great, then prove it by eliminating all the surveillance, spam and robocalling that's making daily life such a chore. If AI is so powerful and can do pretty much anything a human can do only faster, better, cheaper, then why doesn't someone assign it a simple task: make all surveillance, spam and robocalling go away and become a thing of the dreary, dreadful past.

I mean, come on, how hard would that be? Humans can spot spam and robocalling a mile away, so shouldn't AI be even better at completely eliminating these miseries from our already-digitally-overloaded lives? as for surveillance, how hard would it be to identify and block every tracker, data vacuum, etc. on all our connected devices?

How hard would it be for AI to identify the entities and humans profiting from ruining our lives with surveillance, spam and robocalling? Wouldn't a publicly updated list of those responsible, including names, business addresses, email accounts, etc. be transparency in action?

As I outlined in Is Anyone Else's Life as Stupidly Complicated by Digital "Shadow Work" as Mine Is? (May 22, 2024), we're squandering our lives dealing with completely needless, useless complexity imposed on us by monopolies, scammers (oh wait, isn't that a redundancy?), rapacious tech platforms, fraudsters and marketers.