Most of the time, we want our machines to be smart. Like when I put popcorn in the microwave for 23 minutes. “Duh, kitchen machine… you KNOW what I meant!” But other times, we want machines to simply do what we ask. “Hey phone machine… stop auto-correcting my friends with non-Anglo names into food items!”
In the Great AI Race, we are doing a fantastic job of making Smart Mode even smarter but that’s not enough. Jeanie Decker was the first person to open my eyes to this concept: we also need to introduce the concept of smart/obedient toggles. No matter how smart the machines get, there will always be times when we need to tell them to shut up and let us drive.
The Elements of Simple 