My buddy's kid just asked me why AI can't help his grandpa with his garden

I was over at my friend's house in Tacoma last weekend, and his 8-year-old son showed me his school project about robots. He asked me, 'If AI is so smart, why can't it tell my grandpa when to water his tomatoes?' It hit me that we talk about huge AI stuff like self-driving cars, but we skip the small, real things that could actually help people now. His grandpa has bad arthritis and lives alone. A simple tool that could check the soil and send a text would be a bigger deal to him than some new language model. It made me rethink what a real 'innovation' is. Are we just making tech for other tech people, or are we solving actual problems? Has anyone built or seen something simple like that for older folks?

3 comments

3 Comments

paulw661mo ago

Honestly, that's a better question than most tech CEOs get asked.

jessicapatel1mo ago

Isn't it wild how the most basic questions are often the hardest to answer? I see it all the time, like when someone just asks "why" about a normal rule at work.

knight.xena3d ago

My kid asks why the sky is blue. Still stuck.