The people do not yearn for automation
The people do not yearn for automation
尽管ChatGPT的使用量持续飙升，但公众对AI的接受度并不高。文章核心观点指出，患有“软件脑”的人倾向于将世界万物视为可自动化与数据化的对象，这与普通人的体验脱节。AI将人类经验扁平化，无法用数据库完全捕捉。普通人对编写代码或自动化并无渴望，大型科技公司推广智能家居自动化十余年也未能激起大众兴趣。AI的普及正凸显这种思维模式与真实人类需求之间的鸿沟。
Simon Willison’s Weblog
24th April 2026 - Link Blog
The people do not yearn for automation (via) This written and video essay by Nilay Patel explores why AI is unpopular with the general public even as usage numbers for ChatGPT continue to skyrocket.
It’s a superb piece of commentary, and something I expect I’ll be thinking about for a long time to come.
Nilay’s core idea is that people afflicted with “software brain” - who see the world as something to be automated as much as possible, and attempt to model everything in terms of information flows and data - are becoming detached from everyone else.
[…] software brain has ruled the business world for a long time. AI has just made it easier than ever for more people to make more software than ever before — for every kind of business to automate big chunks of itself with software. It’s everywhere: the absolute cutting edge of advertising and marketing is automation with AI. It’s not being a creative.
But: not everything is a business. Not everything is a loop! The entire human experience cannot be captured in a database. That’s the limit of software brain. That’s why people hate AI. It flattens them.
Regular people don’t see the opportunity to write code as an opportunity at all. The people do not yearn for automation. I’m a full-on smart home sicko; the lights and shades and climate controls of my house are automated in dozens of ways. But huge companies like Apple, Google and Amazon have struggled for over a decade now to make regular people care about smart home automation at all. And they just don’t.
24th April 2026
来源：Simon Willison 博客 · simonwillison.net