I’ve seen reports and studies that show products advertised as including / involving AI are off-putting to consumers. And this matches what almost every person I hear irl or online says. Regardless of whether they think that in the long-term AI will be useful, problematic or apocalyptic, nobody is impressed Spotify offering a “AI DJ” or “AI coffee machines”.
I understand that AI tech companies might want to promote their own AI products if they think there’s a market for them. And they might even try to create a market by hyping the possibilities of “AI”. But rebranding your existing service or algorithms as being AI seems like super dumb move, obviously stupid for tech literate people and off-putting / scary for others. Have they just completely misjudged the world’s enthusiasm for this buzzword? Or is there some other reason?
Hype brings investment money to the table. When an emerging technology appears, you can say we are looking to develop those technologies into our existing products and you will see a bump up in your share price.
After a few years of failed products and the hype dies for the next thing you can never mention the old hype but keep the bump in share price.
Think about 5-7 years ago, Blockchain was all the hype, 5-7 before then was Machine Learning and XaaS, before that was Big Data.
Yeah, investors kind of amplify hype. When there is hype, you will have some investors investing money.
If there’s investors investing money, it makes sense for other investors to try to invest first, so that their invested money gains value (the share price rises).
And then it becomes somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy, because suddenly you do have companies equipped with money to pursue that hype, which can feed back into the hype.
But similarly, you’ll eventually reach a point where it does not live up to the inflated hype and then shareholders can just as well be extremely quick to pull out their money and amplify the crash.
My understanding is that a lot of venture capitalist funding is driven by gut feel and personal connection. Like, they’ll tell you that they’re the vanguard of the future with a vision, but most of the time they’re just cliquey bros going “dude, sick” and burning money.
There’s an anecdote in the book “the cold start problem” about how zoom got funding even though the guys funding it thought it was a solved problem, that a new video company wouldn’t go anywhere, but the zoom guy was their bro so they gave him millions of dollars.
I feel like it’s possible some future will look back at this the way we look at feudalism. Just like, that’s such a bad system , why did people put up with it?
Just like, that’s such a bad system , why did people put up with it?
Because hindsight is 20/20 and people had preconceptions back then that filled in the gaps, as they do right now.
The gaps are and were actually full of nonsense like “he’s my buddy I’ll give him money” but people expect the process to be a lot more reliable and solid, because they think they’d be more careful with that kind of money, not realising that to some millions are pocket change (and nobody is careful with pocket change) and that others gamble with other people’s money and thus are a lot more cavalier.
Suits heard about this secret sauce called AI that can cut down on the need for those pesky humans that are always looking for handouts and luxuries like a living wage and benefits. The consumer will have to accept it when the only choices they’re offered are varying flavors of the same shit.
Attracts investors.
When people are evaluating companies, and see a company missing out on the current trend, how is that going to factor into their valuation of the stock prices?
It hypes investors. Investors are the customers.
