Meta Muse: The not-so-cute cost of convenience

Dion Hines | Managing Forum Editor One fall morning, I opened Instagram to find a new feature, Meta’s Muse, a personal artificial intelligence agent. As an adorable round avatar waved at me from my phone, I was simultaneously charmed and unnerved. There has been intense coverage of all things new and alarming about AI: the rise of LLMs, sprawling data center construction, growing energy consumption, security breaches, and now the emergence of agentic AI, but despite my skepticism and mistrust, I found Muse quite cute. I was initially tempted to see what it could do. Meta’s Muse is promoted as an on-demand AI butler primed to handle the busy work that bogs us down. According to Meta, Muse is capable of ordering Amazon shipments, booking restaurant or travel reservations, and even making “suggestions unprompted” to anticipate users’ desires. This may sound appealing to those of us who are overworked, underpaid, and tempted by big tech’s guarantees of even greater convenience.

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