@Julia Waze is actually an open-source app that thosands of volunteers, like myself, have invested millions of hours into improving. I used to be the (volunteer) state manager for Maine, and I responded to feedback from local communities to avoid the sort of issues your NYT piece describes, such as routing needlessly through residential areas. If someone isn’t getting the routing they expect from Waze, hop in and work with the other volunteers to fix it.

@Julia (it's one map, the OpenStreetMap)

@Julia I remember Maps.Me was on the was to rival Google Maps (of course given Google's app is preinstalled, it would be still like 10%). At the peak it got like 10 mln monthly active users.

Alas first it's owner mail.ru pushed for profitability, and then it sold the app to a korean crypto bank, sacking the team.

@organicmaps is the exact same app with some of the original developers, but without marketing funds.

@Julia I don't know if the AI investment bubble *will* burst soon, but I 100% believe it should. It is a powerful technology when applied to the right problems in the right ways, but imo those make up a vanishing fraction of the ways it's being used today.

(Side note: I've been ruling out so many job postings for use cases I don't trust are good applications of AI, y'all. So many things I know how to do but think shouldn't be done in the first place. It's painful.)

@Julia Those of you in the anti-AI league are on the losing side. Painters wept inconsolably for the loss of romanticism when photography was discovered, etc. etc. etc. (give thousands of examples here). And the funny thing is: eventually everything will fall into place. AI is here to stay. It is wonderful. You have to adapt or get screwed.

@Julia Well said. One thing AI may be useful for is finding out which memos and documents we don’t actually need, because AI can both write and read them. If we learn to stop wasting time on those, the effort will not have been wasted.