ATLAS - The Great Temptation Offered by OpenAI

I keep thinking about this Atlas, the browser that OpenAI has launched, and I realize that it's not just a matter of new software, but of a different philosophy about how we should live online. I've seen the presentations, and the effect is hypnotic: an almost obscene ease of getting things done. I haven't tested it, but it's enough to see how it works, how Agent Mode simply takes over the task, fills out forms, compares products beyond our power of concentration. It's like giving a child the keys to your house or car and a credit card and expecting them to do it perfectly, except this time, the child is an artificial genius. And that's exactly the problem, isn't it?

We've gotten used to the Internet as a place where you have to work. To search, to click, to read ten sources, to filter out ads, to get angry. It's a huge temptation, because why waste time on boring reservations or comparisons when AI does it perfectly? It seems like the ultimate gift, but one that comes with an unwritten condition: that you hand over control.

Which brings me to their famous "Browser Memories" feature. Think about it: it's not just a history. It's an active synthesis, a database that never forgets any of your most subtle interests and actions. It's your digital profile taken to the extreme, used not to show you better ads, but to fulfill your life. That's a huge difference! How do we know that this perfect profile won't eventually become a critical vulnerability? We've grown accustomed to thinking that we can erase our history and start over. Atlas could show us that this illusion of anonymity no longer exists. Once you allow it to retain your context, you are trapped in a system that knows you better than you know yourself... there will be a problem!!! somewhere there will be a problem..

And, in addition to this privacy risk, there is also the issue of loss. I wonder how much we will atrophy our ability to navigate, to search, to be curious. If AI gives you the final answer, perfectly tailored to you, when will you discover that strange website, that article that didn't fit, but that opened up a new perspective for you? Atlas is a surgeon of diabolical precision; it cuts through all irrelevance, all noise. But noise, often, hides the greatest treasures. So yes, I am fascinated by Atlas, but I am also deeply uneasy about the world it promises: an incredibly efficient one, but in which we may just be passengers with a strictly determined destination by an agent who already knows everything about us.

Hmmm!!!! ...comfort for control — that's what makes the new browser a truly worrying piece of technology.

The big mistake would be to think that Atlas is just Chrome with a "summary" feature stuck on the side. No. It's an attempt to move beyond the simple summary phase that left us all feeling like we understood a subject without really going through it.