The first AI war will be in your computer

post by Viliam · 2025-04-08T09:28:53.191Z · LW · GW · 8 comments

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The first AI war will be in your computer and/or smartphone.

Companies want to get customers / users. The ones more willing to take "no" for an answer will lose in the competition. You don't need a salesman when an install script (ideally, run without the user's consent) does a better job; and most users won't care.

Sometimes Windows during a system update removes dual boot from my computer and replaces it with Windows-only boot. Sometimes a web browser tells me "I noticed that I am not your default browser, do you want me to register as your default browser?" Sometimes Windows during a system update just registers current Microsoft's browser as a default browser without asking. At least this is what used to happen in the past.

I expect similar dynamics with AIs, soon. The companies will push really hard to make you use their AI. The smaller the difference between the AI capabilities, the more replaceable they are, the more important it will be to get their application to you first, so that you can get used to it, and then stay with it out of habit.

Microsoft has recently added Copilot to Notepad application. The contrast is just... weird. I mean: Notepad, the default plain-text editor in Windows, can an application get simpler than that? And then you add AI, the most advanced invention of humankind, just as a small button (but with a colorful icon) in Notepad's menu. It feels like, dunno, picking up a ball of mud, only to find a sophisticated microchip inside. You can press a key to type a character, hold Shift while typing to write an uppercase character, press Backspace to erase the last character, and... uhm... ask the artificial intelligence to rewrite your text to a formal document, a marketing speech, or a poem. Are you kidding me?

This is because Microsoft really really wants you to use their AI. Just like they want you to use their web browser, to visit their web page every day, etc. Owning your operating system is a convenient tool to push all these preferences on you. A few stubborn people with good tech skills and lots of free time will resist successfully, but most of the population will just succumb to the pressure. Okay Microsoft, if you insist that I use Edge, I will; if you insist that I use Bing, I will; if you insist that I have MSN as my starting web page, I will... and if you insist that I use Copilot with everything I do, I will.

This is not the kind of market competition that you win by building a better product. Your product may or may not be better, but that's beside the point. Being superior to Microsoft Office did not help Lotus SmartSuite much. The point is that you can simply write a script that installs your product, and sets it up as the default option, you can then run that script on most people's computers, and that's how you win.

And I don't expect other companies to just roll over and take it. They will come with their own scripts, and use their own ways to make you run them. They may not own your computer's operating system, but they may own your smartphone's operating system, or your e-mail, or at least some important application you use. I expect them to use all possible ways as a pretext to install their scripts that would override the Microsoft's script. The smartphone might offer you e.g. an app that synchronizes your computer with your smartphone; and by the way if you keep this checkbox active during installation, it will also replace the Microsoft AI with the Google AI or whatever. Or something like that.

So far, we had companies using whatever leverage they had to run their scripts on your computer, and their scripts reverting each other's actions. But the battle can get much more fun if stupid scripts get replaced by literally artificial intelligences. Think about the possibilities! They are no longer limited to replacing the first 512 bytes on your primary hard disk, or changing a record in Windows registry. They could just... do anything. And they could actually think about what they do. Like, maybe wait for the moment when the user seems to be in a good mood. Or in a bad mood, because the competitor's product has just disappointed them in some way. (Is it possible that the competitor's product was discreetly sabotaged?) They could read everything the user reads or writes, and then make a proposal using exactly the right words and arguments.

I expect the companies to fight dirty, because that's what worked for them in the past. The stakes only get higher. Get ready for the upcoming AI war! When the colorful icon in your Notepad starts changing, first slowly, once per system or application update, then faster and faster, until it becomes a blur (and your computer will keep working harder than in the good old days when you mined Bitcoins), you will know that the war is here.

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