The last 20 years trained me to expect perfect software. The product ideal of 2020: everything works out of the box. You unbox an iPhone or a Mac and it just works. Even Windows got radically better.
A software update every few months was the norm. Until recently.
Today, everything important happening with AI is a beta version. If my OpenClaw hasn’t updated in two days, I start to worry. I catch myself hitting “check for updates” the moment I launch the browser. What if something new dropped? Release notes have suddenly become important texts. They’re genuinely interesting to read.
The key parameters used to be stability and fault tolerance. Today it’s the speed at which products evolve — which often demands giving up a slice of reliability.
Not everywhere, of course. I’m not ready to update macOS every day. Not yet. Speaking of Apple. The philosophy that “everything must work perfectly out of the box” is what made them great. And today that same philosophy is dragging them back. AI won’t work perfectly and 100% predictably. Which is why Siri stays a dumb bobblehead. Stable, though.
So — what am I getting at with all this? The future is a permanent beta version. Stability is a contract, and the moment you sign it, you’ve chosen to live in the day before yesterday. Out of the box, all you can unpack now is memories.