Are there a large number of users that feel like they are wasting volunteer time with menial tasks?
Considering how often I’ve seen the complaint from your parent post, it’s quite clear people don’t mind. Quite the opposite, they’d embrace the opportunity. Maybe the people who need assistance don’t realise that, but again, that complaint is quite common. I’d like to help but never signed up specifically because of that surplus.
So they had a solution based on humans who are eager to help and are replacing it with an automated system which when mistaken can have disastrous results and cause personal injury. Seems odd to me. A humanised approach is often seen as a positive and this cuts it out without necessity.
All that said, I don’t have any insider information. Perhaps the people who need assistant do prefer talking to a machine.
When I received my first (and only) BeMyEyes request I spent the first minute or so figuring out how to work the app and the video delay.
“Let me turn the volume up” “Oh wait it’s on my AirPods” “Could you move it more to the left?” “No your left.” “No; not that far”
I’m quite confident that I was a less than optimal assistant and an AI might’ve well done better than me.
Humans are slow and unreliable. AI is fast and consistent.
Both are imperfect. You shouldn't rely on either one for something life-or-death. Nobody is using them to decide if it's safe to cross a street.
Thanks for being a volunteer. But please dont judge blind users if you apparently can not put yourself in ther shoes...
Yes, one reason is that some blind users dont want to waste volunteer time. Another reason is that volunteers are different, but the performance of the image AI is predictable. Another reason is that the AI OCR is fast, can also translate, and, surprise, the text is easier to handle later, for copy&paste.
Besides, the performance of the AI describing pictures is, sorry to say, a little bit above what the typical human is willing or capable of doing. IOW, some humans performs worse then the AI. Also, camera access is different from picture taking. I use volunteers when I need more interactive help, but I totally prefer the AI when I just need a single pic.
I think we can imagine an AI could describe the screen, and even find non-language visual elements if asked explicitly, like arrows or turtle vs hare icons etc. But is it ready to have shared context of how people need to interact with that UI?
And what if it is not? Does the AI have to be useful for every single possible use case before it can be used?
You are reacting as if they are proposing to remove the already existing venues of help. When I see no sign of that.
As for menial tasks, I could definitely see people wanting to use this instead of calling a stranger for more personal matters -- at least initially.
Not to mention I imagine the carbon cost of pushing this through AI is much higher than just using humans.
There are a lot of things that are just tech demos. This is far more than that.
This sort of dismissive comment is very anti-social and full of hidden hatred. Projecting your squarrels with a company onto people that really need the help provided.
And before you click, I am that pissed because I am blind. You have absolutenly no idea what that means, and what BeMyEyes and BeMyAI did for us. Just go home and hate someone else please.
I didn't read any hate towards anyone in the previous comment?
That's the only death of a self-driving car. That's the only one. There was a safety driver with their hands on the wheel, and they didn't see the pedestrian either. And that was an Uber self-driving car, and they've since canceled that project.
While incredibly tragic, it's not at all fair to say that self-driving cars are constantly plowing into people.
Waymo has driven more than 1 million miles with no human injuries. That's dramatically better than any human driver.
Cruise is a close second in number of miles, also with no human injuries.
Perhaps critical thinking is unrelated to sight?