Artificial intelligence (AI) is unavoidable in 2025. It pops up everywhere, making entry into smartphones, computers, services, and… bird feeders? This is despite the technology being little more than an advanced chatbot, offering little practical utility beyond a few functions you don’t actually need.
Generally, the reason AI’s functions are needed is because the previous thing that used to work has been hamstrung so you’ll use the shiny new thing that will drive profits for corporate giants and their shareholders. It’s not about making your life easier. It never has been. Nobody currently developing artificial intelligence is doing it for you or people like you, no matter what their PR claims.
The line must go up
The drive into artificial intelligence isn’t fuelled by a ‘What would our customers want?’ mindset at all. Proper cynics would respond, ‘So what? That’s business.’ Technically, that’s correct. But a business partnership only works in the long term if the option to walk away exists. At present, it doesn’t. That’s because everybody concerned needs you to participate, and they’re not picky about how they go about it. The reason for that is the industry’s massive investment in development and infrastructure and the potential for a similarly massive loss.
AI doesn’t do what it’s supposed to. It can read documents and summarise them for you. It can write code. It can give a fairly sensible response to a question with significant regularity. Never mind the fact that offloading analysis tasks to an AI seems to cause cognitive impairment. What happens if, as seems likely, this is as far as we get? Image and video, and text creation only remain viable options as long as the training data doesn’t wind up poisoning the AI model. What would happen tomorrow if Google or Microsoft (or pick your tech giant) figured out that AI isn’t going to work and announced that they were pulling away from development?
The answer is mass business carnage. Every company that has leapt on the bandwagon and integrated the technology will take a hit on the stock market. The main promoters, even those who show a bold front, will see stock prices crater. But it won’t happen. Not yet. The scale of investment means that, for those companies, AI development absolutely has to work. Failure is not an option, and, because of this, AI will be thrown at you wherever possible. Regardless of whether it benefits you. Right now it doesn’t. It’s the ultimate ‘fake it until you make it’, a mass delusion kept alive by the sort of folks who post ‘profound’ insights on ‘the workplace’ on LinkedIn in all seriousness.
AI creep
At present, the AI industry is like a slimy guy at a bar willing to say or do anything to get an attractive woman back to his place. The main players need everyone to believe the technology will work as predicted long enough for something to happen. When it does happen, assuming it ever does, it won’t be to your benefit. It’s theirs. The industry just needs to get its hands down your pants to make that happen.
AI isn’t being developed to make your life better. It’s being made to sell to companies, who will use it to make you complete more work for the same (or less) money. And if you can’t do it, do you reckon your boss will blame the very expensive AI package he or she decided to buy? Or will you be in the firing line, regardless of how tepid and useless the product is?
There is a small subset of people who can use AI to speed up tasks, but they tend to use the word ‘workflow’ without that small muscle under their right eye twitching. Ask yourself, in all seriousness, what tangible benefits AI has, or is likely to provide.
The best implementations (ChatGPT for internet searches, for instance) replace something that was perfectly functional until it was burned to the ground in search of more money. The remaining functions are toys, curiosities with little real utility. So what if you can remove stray folks from pictures or generate your own video game (something that also doesn’t actually work yet but will ‘soon. Promise‘)? Is that worth burning $350 billion or more a year for?
As the technology stands, there’s nothing for AI to do besides read your emails and summarise and write your responses and make you progressively worse at your job. On-the-spot translation of text and speech is cool, but how many people actually care? How will artificial intelligence change your life on a day-to-day basis, that isn’t a) making up for a formerly good service or b) somehow making life progressively worse?
Once burned…
If you still somehow believe that artificial intelligence is the future, it may be time to look to the past. Facebook was never made to connect its users. It was created to absorb user data to sell to advertisers. Letting people stay in touch was a side-effect, one that was quickly altered or downgraded the moment Facebook needed another method of increasing revenue. The same goes for Instagram and, eventually, WhatsApp.
Google Search started as a way to index the entire internet. It has since morphed into a method of keeping you on the search function long enough to serve enough Google Ads to swell the company’s bottom line. It’s no longer about efficiency, because you’re no longer the company’s prime consideration. All things must serve the shareholder machine, and that includes you.
Uber never wanted to give folks affordable rides at any time of day or night. It simply hasn’t figured out how to make any real money out of the service it provides.
Streaming services aren’t created for you. Netflix wants to know how to keep you watching. Ditto Disney, Spotify, YouTube, and TikTok. Some use the data you generate to create lowest-common-denominator movies or shows that are a ‘sure thing’, to advertise, or otherwise as an easy way to generate money (and to poison your brain, but nobody cares about that).
Microsoft never bought Activision because it cares about gamers. It bought it for the same reason it bought Minecraft — it wants you in its ecosystem, and it’ll do anything to keep you there. Even spending $70 billion on a company and then actively making it worse (I didn’t think that was possible) in an effort to profit from it. But you’re supposed to stay locked in so that Microsoft can siphon as much money as possible from you to it.
Back in ’83
With these examples, and too many others to list, is it so hard to believe that the minds behind the drive to cram AI into everything don’t care about what happens to you after it makes this thing that doesn’t work (at least, not as claimed) and probably never will? The surge in AI hype has never been about what people can do with it. It’s all about keeping the tech industry’s profits up quarter after quarter, which is another peculiar form of delusion.
Nobody ever asks what happens when Apple stops turning a profit. It has to happen. It’s inevitable. And when it does, the stock market will either turn on the company like a pack of ravenous sharks or allow it to sink, BlackBerry-style, unmolested to the muck at the bottom of the financial ocean. Similarly, nobody is asking what happens if AI doesn’t work.
All signs are that it won’t, but the scale of investment and buy-in means nobody can ask the question. “It just has to, okay? There’s too much at stake. The shareholders are counting on us. Take your negativity somewhere else.” That translates to: “This product will change your life,” but directed at you, the source of the money and the training data and everything else needed to make this work.
Just… not work for you. That’s too difficult to pull off right now. No, you get to sit down and shut up and use the wonky tools, because Microsoft and Meta and Sam Altman said so. Because the current scale of investment and uncertainty means that, for these companies, it has to work. Because if this doesn’t, there’s nothing behind AI to step in and take its place as the Next Big Thing™. That might be the most worrisome thought of all.
