Manton about AI usage in Micro.blog:
Earlier this year I blogged a strategy for how I want to use AI thoughtfully in Micro.blog. It has been a good guide for me, like user-centered guardrails. There is still so much we can build that fits within that strategy, hopefully avoiding the worst “put AI in everything” fixation from bigger companies that users are rejecting.
Micro.blog has a master switch for AI. If the user turns it off, there’s no AI usage. Period. None of the AI features would work:
While it’s true that users of Micro.blog would lose some of the benefits of the service if they turn it off (and they’re paying for the service just the same), it is right to let the users choose if they want to use AI, without forcing it everywhere possible, like Microsoft has done with Copilot.
I find that Micro.blog has followed this mentality, especially looking into what is being done around Inkwell (Inkwell has a feature where AI can summarize several RSS feeds in a helpful “here’s what happened on JTR’s blog in the last week” sort of way).
This post from Manton didn’t come out of nowhere; he was listening to Nilay Patel’s opinion piece about “Software Brain,” which is worth listening to. It’s one of the reasons I enjoy following Manton’s feed - it’s not just Micro.blog, but there are also interesting opinions about AI and using it.