Intelligence today feels a lot like the internet in it's early days

Thinking back, the way we are introduced to intelligence today is synonymous with the early days of the internet. There was a time where we had to go to a cyber cafe, pay for some time, sit at a computer that wasn't yours to access it. It did not meet us where we were, but over time it quietly slipped into our lives faster than we could recognize. Suddenly it was in your home. Then in your pocket. Then everywhere, until one day you stopped noticing it at all. It just became part of how you lived. Intelligence today feels a lot like the internet back then. Still something you have to go to, rather than something that meets you where you are.

On paper, intelligence is more accessible than ever. It's sitting right there in another tab. But in practice? Still completely fragmented. I use technology for almost everything. Work, communication, navigation, thinking and I can feel where it breaks. Most people can't quite name the problem because it's hidden in the speed of our routines, but it's there. Look at any day as a tech worker. You're moving between meetings and notes, Slack threads and documents, browser tabs and task managers. Each tool holds one narrow slice of your attention. None of them talk to each other. You end up living in digital silos, mentally stitching context together while trying to use AI to speed up tiny fragments of the process.

ChatGPT for writing. Midjourney for images. Cursor for code. Granola for meetings. Each one waits behind its own door for me to walk through. But I keep wondering why intelligence has to exist in separate corners. Why can't it just exist across every surface I'm already touching? It could surface a quiet insight during a meeting. Summarize as I'm reading. Draft alongside my thinking. Move with me instead of waiting for me to come to it. Maybe the whole idea of defragmentation is wrong. Maybe it's not about stitching these tools together. Maybe we need to throw out the entire workflow and rebuild it from scratch. Let intelligence exist where I already am, instead of making me travel to wherever it happens to live. An intelligence layer that understands what I'm doing, anticipates what I might need next, but still gives me enough control to decide.

Chat as an interface is both the beginning and the limitation of today's intelligence. It's familiar, which is why it works, but it also flattens every interaction into one shape. There's this built-in assumption that every need can be solved by typing or talking. And sure, those are ways to communicate but they're not how we interact across every context. In many situations, people don't want a conversation at all. In a meeting, they want something that listens. In a document, they want co-writing. In a browser, they want comprehension. Elsewhere, they want intuition. Chat isn't the product. It's just evidence of how early we are in making intelligence feel natural. This whole wave of technology should feed our thinking, not scatter it.

The moment intelligence becomes truly multimodal, the old interface patterns stop making sense. When a system can understand images, text, voice, gestures, and context all at once, it can't behave like a stack of screens anymore. It has to become something more fluid. A surface that listens, sees, and adapts. Mode switching won't be something you do. It'll be something the system does in the background. The experience becomes choreography. You lead, the intelligence adjusts.

Here's the tension though. As agents get more capable, the interface actually needs to get quieter. The hardest design problem is knowing when the agent should surface and when it should stay back. That's the line between magic and annoyance. When it works, it feels intuitive. When it doesn't, it just feels intrusive. Designers will need to give intelligence a sense of social etiquette, not just a visual style. Think about what over-eager actually looks like. An agent that interrupts your flow to suggest things you don't need. One that corrects you mid-sentence. One that assumes it knows better than you do. The failures aren't technical, they're social. The system needs to learn when to wait. This is where micro-interactions start carrying real weight. A small highlight shows the system caught your reference and a gentle animation signals it's working. Feedback that's felt, not heard. The system has to communicate without announcing itself.

Designing for ambient intelligence means the software isn't the center anymore. It fades back. Present but not demanding. Working quietly until it's needed. That shift changes everything we've been trained to build. Designers stop crafting screens and start designing behavior. The roles an agent can take. Researcher. Co-writer. Curator. Visualizer. The interface stops enforcing one paradigm and starts letting the agent take whatever shape fits your posture in that moment.

Eventually these systems feel less like tools and more like a presence you work alongside. Something in the room with you, that picks up on what you're doing, understands your intent and moves with you instead of running ahead or falling behind. We're still early. Intelligence is still something you pull up, not something that's already there. Most of what gets built is shaped by screens and buttons because that's what we know. But the shift isn't about more inputs or smarter outputs. It's about recognizing that behavior itself is changing. People don't think in steps or keywords. They explore. Pause. Correct themselves halfway. Change direction entirely. The real test is how the system behaves when you're uncertain. When you're distracted. When you're still figuring out what you even want. That's when you know intelligence has truly become part of everyday life, much like the internet does today. Maybe it’s not something you have to go to, rather it’s something that meets you where you are.