GPT-4 got me seriously considering making a product for school-age kids w/ ADHD. It’d be a physical device (like a StarTrek communicator). That listens during your day and keeps track of a) things you say that you’ll do or b) tasks that other people ask you to do. Then it compiles those tasks and attempts to be basically a secretary. It can also plug into your email, texts & school assignments.
The privacy implications are horrifying. But if done right, you’re taking about a kind of digital ‘executive function’ that could help a lot of kids that struggle with things like prioritization and time blindness.
Marshall MacLuhan said something to the effect that every new communication technology results in a sort of self-amputation of that same faculty in the individual person.
I was diagnosed with ADHD and my interpretation of that diagnoses was not "I need something to take over this functionality for me," but "I need to develop this functionality so that I can function as a better version of myself or to fight against a system which is not oriented towards human dignity but some other end."
I guess I am reluctant to replace the unique faculties of individual children with a generic faculty approved by and concordant with the requirements of the larger society. How dismal to replace the unique aspects of children's minds with a cookie cutter prosthetic meant to integrate nicely into our bullshit hell world. Very dismal.
Sure, the implications are horrifying, but tech companies have proven themselves quite trustworthy over the past few decades, so I'm sure it'd be fine.
As someone with ADHD, I say: Please don't build this.
It’s not just for people with ADHD. Someone will build this very soon and people will use it a lot. Hopefully Apple builds it because I guess I trust them a little more.
We're not too far away from a smaller LLM that could be run locally that could do this, which would make it more privacy friendly. The plugging into my email seems like a great way to begin or complete a lethal trifecta and I don't have a good solution there, though.
Every iPhone, iPad, and Mac that either ships with or is upgraded to iOS 26, iPadOS 26 and macOS 26 has a 3-billion parameter LLM that’s available to developers and operates on-device. Mail, Notes, Reminders are already integrated.[1]
I might be out of the loop, but if anyone else is confused about the version number:
> If you were expecting iOS 19 after iOS 18, you might be a little surprised to see Apple jump to iOS 26, but the new number reflects the 2025-2026 release season for the software update.
This is what I wanted to build the day chat gpt came out. Except being unable to guarantee the output due to hallucinations drove me into figuring out evals, and then the dream died due to complexity.
The privacy implications are horrifying. But if done right, you’re taking about a kind of digital ‘executive function’ that could help a lot of kids that struggle with things like prioritization and time blindness.