Google Gemini's eerie efficiency masks a hollow promise on productivity
· TC. Sottek
This week, my colleagues David Pierce and Jay Peters both got their hands on Google’s new AI agent, Spark. And their conclusion is pretty unsettling: it works almost too well.
This week, my colleagues David Pierce and Jay Peters both got their hands on Google’s new AI agent, Spark. And their conclusion is pretty unsettling: it works almost too well. Spark somehow knew that David’s dog is named Frida. It also knew the first name of Jay’s wife. Neither of them had ever explicitly told Google that information. It just knew.
That’s the kind of thing that makes you stop and think. The AI is so effective at piecing together fragments of your life from scattered data that it feels invasive, even when it’s technically just doing what it was designed to do. But what actually scares me about Spark isn’t the creepy accuracy. It’s the broader vision behind it.
All of this seems aimed at a future where “productivity” is the highest good. We keep hearing about how these tools will save us time, organize our lives, and make us better at our jobs. But it misses the point. Productivity is often sold as a cure for everything that’s wrong with our personal lives, even tied to our moral worth. The real problems in the world aren’t about not being efficient enough.
So sure, Spark is impressive. It’s probably the most capable AI assistant we’ve seen yet. But the bigger question is what happens when we let a tool like this shape our priorities. If the goal is just to make us faster and more productive, we might end up with a world that runs more smoothly but feels a lot less human.