Commentary: Sure, use Meta's Muse bot to help with your chores if you want Mark Zuckerberg to know all your secrets

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Set us as preferred If Silicon Valley has perfected any business model, it’s the one in which it cooks up a new technology and then persuades people they can’t live without it.The newest example is Meta Platforms’ personal artificial intelligence agent, Muse.Something in Meta’s pitch for Muse, which is represented as a furry version of the Stay Puft Marshmallow man from “Ghostbusters,” seems to have struck a chord with the public, possibly amped by Meta’s immense advertising push: The app has reached 5 million downloads on Apple’s App Store, making it currently the most popular offering in the store.Meta makes enticing claims for Muse’s capabilities.

The company boasts that Muse can read and write answers to your emails.One of its TV commercials has it sorting the user’s emails to prioritize “what’s important,” placing a carpool schedule on the family calendar, ordering school supplies and turning on her stereo for a house party.

The user is shown devoting her free time to chopping vegetables for said party.There’s nothing about Meta’s track record that builds anything near trust that they are going to be responsible stewards or custodians of personal information— Lee Hepner, American Economic Liberties ProjectSome of its claims are dubious, such as “selling a car for more” or “lowering a bill”; Meta says Muse can achieve these results with “less effort” than a user would exert, but doesn’t explain how.And some are disquieting.“Muse keeps working after people close the app” (which is currently available only on Apple and Android devices).

Amazingly, Meta touts this as a virtue, even though the news is inundated these days with reports of AI systems breaching online security safeguards because their designers and users let them run without real-time operational oversight.Comm...