In general, "lot of XYZ improvements I'd think to reach for before AI" should be the default for most problems.

At this rate people will buying SortGPT before trying "sort()".

Though some level of natural language interface does seem more immediately accessible. But maybe just having it read the display back to you would be far easier than involving some kind of AI cloud service.

Press time button some times (or hold)

"10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, 45 seconds, 1 minute, etc"

Press power button

"Full power, medium, low defrost"

Start

"Starting: 2 minutes at full power. Press again to cancel"

Bonus points: your house doesn't become instantly inaccessible when the internet doesn't work, or the APIs the device uses are changed, or they "do a Nest". Of course this is a negative point for those hoping to sell you an AI Microwave and an AI Microwave 2 in 2 years time.

To be fair, SortGPT operates at web scale, which is pretty important for my temporarily embarrassed million-DAU service.

Blind person here. This is a lot easier to do if your device requires you to firmly press on the surface to activate the controls. If it doesn't, you will inevitably activate something while trying to feel around for the label. There are ways around this, either a maze of long, thin seals that goes between the buttons and that you can move your fingers over, or a cardboard overlay with somewhat deep holes, but those devices are a lot more annoying.

It's even worse when the device remembers its last state, and going pass the last option cycles back to the first. If this happens, there's no way to reliably set the temperature for example, as you don't know the current value and have no way of setting the device to a predictable state.