Dave Guarino has an interesting post where he writes about software helpers:

I spent much of this summer lucky to take part in a residency with a number of incredibly interesting folks pursuing ideas that are, I would say, non-obvious in the how.

One of the topics I thought about most was software helpers (agents) that navigate government services for people.

These things pop up everywhere. And yet… it feels like no one has worked out the core (norm-based) infrastructure for these things to just be normal, trustable, and beneficial?

There’s a lot of useful framing thoughts there, but as I started thinking about it, I thinking of more and more (not necessarily good or bad) software helpers out there, and wanted to gather some thoughts (will be updating as I think of more)

  • MuckRock, of course
  • DoNotPay
  • Ancestry.com
  • TurboTax, etc