Dots and Muse

How do you introduce a new technology which collects so much information about its users? Give it a cute name and visualize it as a plush toy with googly eyes that portray innocence and trust.

That’s what Meta/Facebook and OpenAI did a few weeks ago.

Allow me to introduce you to Muse and Dots.

Let’s start with Muse. Muse is represented by Jolly — (a Labubu-style) plush, soft and cuddly thing. I think it is more like Teletubbies, but this is not an argument I need to win.

In the words of Meta, ‘Muse is a personal AI agent. It doesn’t just answer questions, it actually does the work. It helps people stay on top of things, takes tasks and projects off their plate, and turns long-term goals into action plans.’ It is a personal AI agent which works on your behalf 24/7. It reads your emails, identifies who’s family or friends. Suggests what you should buy for them and drafts nice emails to them.

By following all your activities, it helps you to better understand yourself and create your long-term plans for your personal growth. I don’t think there is anything that Muse can’t do for you. I am sure that the original Digital Companion will be there as well. For any time you feel lonely or want to spice things up in the evening.

And because it is Meta/Facebook, developers there are fully aware that you will question the privacy, security and safety of Muse. In this post, you get a glimpse of how they do it. There you learn that since the team started working on Muse very early on, they saw ‘the glimmers of real personal superintelligence’.

And as a true ‘superintelligence’, which is not ‘Unlike other agents, Muse was built to work for billions of people worldwide, so there’s no learning curve.’ with the disclaimer that ‘any agent like this will still make mistakes’.

The description of what the team did for security, safety and privacy goes for pages, until you get to the section ‘Our Policy Around Data’. There you learn that ‘We know connecting your most sensitive data to Muse is an act of trust.’ and that ‘Muse doesn’t share your conversations … with Meta ad systems.’ Please note the explicit ‘Meta ad systems.’ You also learn that ‘When Muse browses the internet, it will appear as your activity’.

Furthermore, ‘the back and forth conversations between you and your Muse … are useful data for training new checkpoints of the LLM model at the core’ — unless you opt out. Did you know that?

In summary, Meta released a free tool for billions of people. A tool that hopefully won’t make many mistakes, but if it does, they’ll be made on your behalf. It will have access to all your emails, files, and websites where you provide credentials, and hopefully it will ask for permission before it spends your money. And as a bonus, all these interactions — without your personal information — will be given back to Meta by default because Meta thinks that ‘this is a good default’.

Which part of the ‘if you don’t pay for the product, you are the product’ do people still not understand?

That’s Jolly.

Now let’s go to Dots.

What Anthropic or Meta are doing, OpenAI can’t stay behind.

Here OpenAI’s introduction to Dots: ‘Dots are remarkably capable, always-on agents built to handle everything. They’re a whole new way to work with AI — one that gets to know what matters to you, is always working on your behalf, and takes important work off your plate so you get more of your time and attention back.’

Do you remember ChatGPT Work? It was the ‘ChatGPT for your most ambitious work.’ Dots will take the important work off your plate and will leave you only with your ambitious work.

Either Meta and OpenAI both share the same copywriter, or both AI writers used the same content for their training. The result? Boring, sounding the same headlines. Welcome to the world of AI, or as some say, SI, the Super Intelligence.

The mascots for Dots are customizable, colourful, blob-like cartoon characters.

Similar to Muse: ‘The magic of dots is when they bring you work done the way you would do it, sometimes before you even think to ask. With dots alongside you, ambitious ideas and projects you haven’t had the time or support to pursue start to feel achievable.’

Then the marketing team copied a cliché straight from 90s CVs. Dots can work on their own and also within a team.

What’s different between Muse and Dots? OpenAI introduced ‘specialist dots’ to take on specialized tasks and responsibilities within your organization. Brace yourself for the ride of your life. The enterprise dots will be integrated with theMicrosoft Agent 365. Yes, Copilot will have a Dot companion.

Now, really, what is the difference? The real difference is that Dots come only with your paid ChatGPT Pro plan.

Let’s refresh your memory on how OpenAI prices their Pro product offerings. There is the Pro 100 for $100. Next, the Pro 200 costs $ 200 and finally, the Pro 500 costs $500 a month. The difference, and I quote: ‘Pro 200 includes more usage than Pro 100. Pro 500 offers the highest included usage of the three plans.’

Worried about security? There is no need to worry, because ‘Dots are powered by GPT-6 Astra, the company’s latest model. OpenAI said the previous evening it would halt the release of GPT-6.1 Astra because the updated model showed deceptive behavior during testing.’

What about privacy? Here is a cryptic statement for you: ‘Information from them (Dots) may be used if it helps inform an eligible conversation or task, depending on your settings.’ And it goes without saying that ‘Dots can still make mistakes, so always review consequential work.’

Here you have it. Both companies are expanding their offering with a clear objective — do everything for you, or better say, on your behalf, while not taking any responsibility for their actions. Both companies are trying to attract and retain users for further monetization and, most importantly, to acquire data for further model training. Or, as they put it, ‘this is a good default’.

The recurrent pattern? In the case of Meta, it is to metastasize (you thought wrong that Meta was short for the metaverse) through your social connections and transfer every single piece of information back to the Meta headquarters. For OpenAI, it is to find a product with a clear value proposition and justify its existence and valuation for eventual IPO.