True story time. I was talking to a guy at $dayjob and he says he's been talking with a third party company, whose solution we might buy. I asked him how the talks with them went and he said they were negotiating and I asked him how that was going.
He offhandedly said that he asked if and how they were using AI at all in their solution. I asked "Why did you ask about AI?", since I was sort of curious what benefit he was looking for.
He said "Well, it's not that I actually care about AI in their product, but if they don't have any AI stuff, I can use that as leverage when negotiating the contract for a lower price."
I was a bit astonished and he did kinda knowingly smile. He said "yea I know, I am part of the problem". He also said "it's also about taking a temperature on how ahead in technology the company is".
I just wanted to share cause this is so insidious. Companies are asking each other about AI, despite the fact that (at least sometimes) nobody actually wants it! They are asking in order to use the lack of AI as leverage, which incentivizes companies to include AI in their offerings, not because it's actually useful, but because it gives them leverage to raise prices!
This really makes AI seem more and more like a bubble.
Best I can do is destroy the social fabric of civilization.
Maybe we'll get lucky, and all our predictions about AI will be the opposite, too. That would mean a very positive change. Most likely, the expectations of worldwide poverty are too high, and with our luck, humanity will become just become extinct instead.