I watched the interview with Ben Schneiderman, an expert on AI. I was most surprised by Shneiderman's emphatic claims that machines are not partners or assistants, but tools or enhancements. This is surprising because, as mentioned, a lot of AI technologies today are marketed to us as assistants; they even have names (Alexa, Siri, Cortana). Schneiderman went on to argue that all technology starts out as mimicking human functionality, but must transcend that in order to be truly helpful; this was a very interesting way of contextualizing where we are currently in the development of AI.
Following up on this surprising line of reasoning, I would ask Shneiderman what he believes to be AI's specific, unique, non-human-mimicry trait, that can help enhance human functioning? It seems to me that many people today would answer this in a vein similar to the partner/assistant relationship that Shneiderman has disagreed with, so I am very curious to hear his specific answer.
I think the note about how a lot of AI technologies are marketed to us is super interesting! Marketing's role in determining how we think about AI is super interesting.