Adactio: Journal-Trust

In their rush to cram in “AI” “features”, it seems to me that many companies don’t actually understand why people use their products.

Google is acting as though its greatest asset is its search engine. Same with Bing.

Mozilla Developer Network is acting as though its greatest asset is its documentation. Same with Stack Overflow.

But their greatest asset is actually trust.

If I use a search engine I need to be able to trust that the filtering is good. If I look up documentation I need to trust that the information is good. I don’t expect perfection, but I also don’t expect to have to constantly be thinking “was this generated by a large language model, and if so, how can I know it’s not hallucinating?”

“But”, the apologists will respond, “the results are mostly correct! The documentation is mostly true!”

Sure, but as Terence puts it:

The intern who files most things perfectly but has, more than once, tipped an entire cup of coffee into the filing cabinet is going to be remembered as “that klutzy intern we had to fire.”

Trust is a precious commodity. It takes a long time to build trust. It takes a short time to destroy it.

I am honestly astonished that so many companies don’t seem to realise what they’re destroying.