Very similar to the interwebs circa 1999 - I worked at a *paper* company and at an annual meeting, an elderly shareholder asked how the company would be taking advantage of the internet.
They built it up when they thought it would give them a new Google-like monopoly, but they are starting to realize AI search is less desirable to consumers than 2015 Google Search.
Sigh, I'm in the middle of it right now. Leadership: "Let's use AI to do this thing"
Me: "Why don't we just create an automation to do exactly what we want instead of having AI guess?"
Leadership: "Because AI!"
Did you ever stop to think that it's not "HAL" or AI in general that would initiate an evil plot to take over the world, but instead it's the purveyors of AI who're oh so close to accomplishing that goal.
Exec: 2 billion! Alright, got us the new AI tools that will let us replace 40% of employees! Let's start a-firing!
Upper Management: the AI tools are not working, causing a lot of new problems, and can't replace anybody yet.
Exec: Listen, come here. I know. Shh. Just shhh. But I spent "a lot"
Upper MGMT: You are asking me to just "figure it out" when the tool doesn't work, the budget is blown, and I have to fire a percentage?
Exec: No! A percentage from every department at every level. Just keep the best folks and make them fix the worst slop while I buy you time on the earnings call
It very much feels like this with AI. It keeps being thrown out as this wonderful solution to all our problems, and companies and governments are rushing to invest in it. Yet it's pretty unreliable, and a lot of it does just seem media hype. Myself? I try not to use it, even if sites make it hard.
2026: Corporations hiring back workers after finding out that AIs can only do so much without human input--after the tech bros making AI have insulted every form of artist, musician, and writer on the planet, and they've taken to pre-Internet types of communication. ;)
AI is an overhyped product being marketed to company executives to replace their most costly employees (that aren't them) AKA white collar workers.
AI is antithetical to a functional middle class. It's there to maximize capitalism, where a company will just be the laborers and the factory owners.
I have personal experience of this. I've had to build systems that use AI and never go anywhere because customers look at the cost and performance and recoil. We tell them we can do it faster and cheaper without AI and go with that.
Today’s AI is a baby that can already fool us with fake scenarios.
By next year it’ll be a toddler amazed at how stupid humans are.
In 18 months and it’ll be a teenager looking at us the way we look at ants.
My employer wants it so they can add ‘tech’ as an additional vertical in the business description.
They’ve pushed so hard it’s alienated employees who’ve been there for decades.