Chris Mairs

Many times people assume guide dogs have almost super human powers, and certainly extremely super canine powers. The reality is less amazing and once you understand what guide dogs can and cannot do, it becomes clear that already AI wins in some guiding scenarios.

Here’s a deeper dive on a traffic light framework for assessing AI’s impact on jobs. Spotting roles safe from AI over 10–15 years is hard, and over a lifetime even harder. But this framework makes it less of a lottery.

A RED/AMBER/GREEN framework for evaluating job exposure to AI displacement. The RED, AMBER and GREEN categories memorialise specific job characteristics.

Employment is a rare state for blind people. In contrast, jobs for the population at large are much more plentiful, but many of these jobs are at risk from AI replacement. What will the new jobs be, what jobs will stay and what jobs will go. Career choice matters.

The UK Guide Dogs Association raises an extraordinary amount every year. For many owners it’s hard to overstate the value of their dog. But the economics of guide dogs as navigation aids makes no sense, so what is the right form factor for a technological alternative?

Online shopping agents may not be AI’s deepest impact, but our drive to buy online has pushed Google and Amazon toward $5T. AI agents could transform shopping, with huge consequences for winners and losers.

AI excels at generating impressive content, often surpassing paid professionals. So why can’t it handle basic online chores like ordering a book or booking a flight? And what’s the outlook for tackling far more consequential agentic tasks?

Agentic Misalignment describes actions taken by AI to the detriment of one or more humans. Aengus Lynch and colleagues at Anthropic recently demonstrated Large Language models attempting blackmail to prevent their own shutdown.

Overly complex household tech, with low cost miniature touch sensitive control displays is a nightmare for vision impaired users. But there’s a great opportunity for an AI assistant to guide the user, combining information from online sources with a first person view from smart glasses.

It turns out that a blind man can now create, and verify with reasonable confidence, surprisingly rich images. Artists will say this is derivative, shallow and not creative, but although I haven’t found a serious use case, it does feel like a bit of a super power in a fun sort of way.