A Canonical engineer has published a prototype launcher that simulates how on-device AI could be used to enhance and aid users of the Ubuntu desktop.

But the warty-prototype1 snap by Didier Roche-Tolomelli (aka didrocks) is not a real launcher. It’s a semi-interactive, automated mockup. It simulates things a user could do, and that includes interacting with a (theoretical) on-device AI model to complete tasks.

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[–] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 child)

Yes the harness is what i was talking about.

You can get footguns also from your own cli commands, misunderstanding the documentation, or by copy/pasting from a guide without knowing what you're doing. But in both those cases it is clearer that it is your responsibility for understanding the context. And eventually that's how you learn.

A generative, agentic system that does things for you without you needing to understand, and gets it right a lot of the time, but trains the user to enter the sudo password wihout understanding is not the UX I would encourage in an operating system.

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