Google’s AI tools embrace Clippy’s dream

The words “It looks like you’re writing a letter, would you like some help with that?” Google’s own AI didn’t appear at any time during a recent demo of the Office Suite tool. But as I look at Aparna Pappu, Google’s workspaces leader outlining the feature I/O on stageI was reminded of a certain animated paperclip that another tech giant once hoped to help usher in a new era of office work.

Even Microsoft will admit that Clippy’s legacy isn’t entirely positive, but the virtual assistant has always been associated with a particular period of work – with beige computers with laborious email, clip art and clunking hard drives. full. Now, work has changed — be it Slack pings, jostling text cursors in Google Docs, and students who don’t know what file systems are — and as generative AI creeps into our professional lives, both Google and Microsoft are recognizing that. That’s what it’s calling a new era of tools for getting the job done.

Google is largely dedicated 10 minutes of its developer conference keynote It’s now called “Duet AI for Google Workspace,” a collection of AI-infused tools that are making it into its own productivity apps — Gmail, Docs, Slides, Sheets, and more. Most of the features were previously announced in March, but the showcase showed them off in more detail. Examples include being able to generate a draft job description from just a few prompts in Docs, create a schedule for a dog walking business in Sheets, and even create illustrations to illustrate a presentation in Slides.

New to the I/O presentation was Sidekick, a feature designed to understand what you’re working on, pull together details from Google’s various apps, and allow you to use them as notes. Or even present clear information to incorporate directly into your work.

If Google’s Duet is designed to combat the intimidation of a blank document, then Sidekick is looking toward a future where a black AI prompt box may be the intimidating first hurdle. “What if AI could actively prompt you?” Pappu said that he has introduced a new facility. “Even better, what if these prompts were actually relevant and changed based on what you were working on?”

This was followed by a live demonstration, showing the audience how Sidekick could analyze an approximately two-paragraph-long children’s story, provide a summary, and then suggest ways to continue it. Clicking on one of these hints (“What happened to the golden seashell?”) ​​brought up three possible directions for the story to go. These were added as bullet points to the story by clicking “Insert” to serve as reference for ongoing writing. It can also suggest an image as an example and then generate it.

Next, Sidekick is shown summarizing a series of emails. When prompted, it is able to extract specific details from the relevant Sheets spreadsheet and insert them into the emailed response. And finally, on slides, Sidekick suggests creating speaker notes for the presenter while showing the slides.

The feature looks like a modern twist on Microsoft’s old assistant, Clippy, which will spring into action at the mere hint of activity in a Word document to ask if you want help with tasks. like writing a letter, Google’s Duet is definitely in a different league, both in terms of its reading comprehension and the quality of the text that the generative AI spits out. But the core spirit of Clippy — recognizing what you’re trying to do and offering to help — remains.

but perhaps more important How Sidekick was shown giving this information. In Google’s performance, Sidekick is invoked by the user and does not appear until they press its icon. This is important because one of the things that bothered people the most about Clippy was that it wouldn’t shut the hell up. “These toon-zombies insist on popping up again as Wile E. Coyote,” the new York Times saw In his original review of Office 97.

Although they share some similarities, Clippy and Sidekick belong to two very different eras of computing. Clippy was designed for an era where many people were buying their first desktop computer for home and computer Using office software for the first time, New York Magazine cites a Microsoft postmortem Which says that part of its problem was that the assistant was “optimized for first use” — potentially the first time you saw it, but overly annoying every time after that.

Fast forward to 2023, and these tools are now familiar but exhausting in the possibilities they offer. We no longer just sit, type, print and email, but collaborate across platforms, bring together endless streams of data, and strive to produce a consistent output in multimedia splendor.

AI features like Duet and Sidekick (not to mention Microsoft’s competing Copilot feature for Office) aren’t meant to teach you the basics of how to compose a letter in Google Docs. They’re there because you’ve already written hundreds of letters, and you don’t want to spend your life manually writing hundreds more. They’re not there to show that the slide features speaker notes; They are there to populate it for you.

It looks like Google Workspace’s Duet AI or Microsoft Office’s CoPilot aren’t interested in teaching you the basics of using their software. They are there to automate the process. The spirit of Clippy lives on, but in a world that has moved beyond needing a paperclip to tell you how to write a letter.

Microsoft Clippy disabled by default With the release of Office XP in 2001 and the Assistant was completely removed in 2007. Between these points, philosopher Nick Bostrom in his now famous paperclip maximizer Thought experiment, which warned of the existential risk posed by AI even when given a supposedly harmless target (making paperclips). Clippy isn’t making a comeback, but its spirit — now animated by AI — lives on. Let’s hope it’s still harmless.