Google finally rolled out the Gemini search thingy in my area. There’s also the Meta AI that I got recommended both in Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. I just don’t get this. I hear both online and in real life that people are against it, it is a nuisance, they don’t want to use it, and yet it gets constantly pushed. Why? It must take a lot of resources to buy the hardware, set the actual AI up, train it, and keep maintaining all the infrastructure, including but not limited to extra space, swapping out broken hardware and paying the electric bill.
As far as I understand, both Alphabet and Meta are in the business of gathering personal data and selling targeted ads based on the data they sell. Can they gather so much more data from a barely-used AI feature that it is worth it?
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its the hot new shiny thing that companies think is the new frontier market to corner. the millions of people that tolerate it or are complacent you wont tend to hear their comments
It’s a case of the loud minority.
AI is getting pushed everywhere because it sucks, not in spite of it. Machine learning needs tons of data to work correctly and they get that data by rolling out half-baked products for you to use.
It’s a bubble. And a marketing fad. The same thing you saw in the past with products being reformulated as “low fat”, or being labeled “organic” before it had a specific meaning, or how there are so many products that are gluten free.
The Dot Com bubble was the same way. Novelty causes specific interest and that interest gets exploited to drum up investment. That investment outpaces the actual market demand for the relevant segment (or even base utility) and eventually the value of it collapses then re-plateaus at a more stable value.
A more recent comparable bubble would be video streaming services. That market had a few innovators, then a huge bloat of copycats that didn’t have staying power, and we’re back to a few key players that have either consolidated competitors into themselves or the underperforming ones just died off due to having a broken business model.
>Can they gather so much more data from a barely-used AI feature that it is worth it?
Yes, because users are providing input prompts just as they do when the search for things on whatever platform. That data can be collected and then sold to third parties in bulk based on specific categories for geography or demographics.
There’s a loud minority with money that is pumping that money into it.
I’d check what Meredith Whitaker, signal CEO, has to say on the subject.
TLDR: she claims AI is just more surveillance. These companies make money out of surveillance users to empower their tools. AI everywhere helps them, not you.
It’s the current thing investors like to throw money at, on the off-chance they’re going to make billions. The same people used to like to invest in things with the word “blockchain” in. Before that, they’d invest in anything that sounded like it might be a good idea for a “website”…
They have to make money for shareholders somehow.
Surveillance
First: You only hear from the people that do not want AI features. So you have a selection bias in the opinions you gather. There is probably a silent majority that just doesn’t care.
Second: They do it for money. That point is more complicated. For example: googles search measures its growth in people staying on google search so if AI generates text that you have to read before you can dismiss it then that’s a win that indirectly translates to money. There are other reasons and techniques how companies use AI to improve statistics that show their success to shareholders but it all comes down to money.
Sunk cost. All these companies over invested in it on false promises that it would perform functions that it turns out it can’t actually do. So now they’re trying to force it on us to get their investment back.
It’s the current speculative bubble. When there’s a hot new piece of tech that claims to be revolutionary, every room temp IQ venture capitalist will trip over each other pouring all their money into companies pushing that tech, in an effort to get in on the ground floor and multiply their money. Whether the tech is positive or revolutionary has absolutely nothing to do with it, what matters is the perception among investors that the tech is a good investment. To see how this ends, see the dot com bubble. Although at least in that case the underlying tech was actually revolutionary in a fairly positive way. I’ve yet to see AI have any meaningful capacity to do anything except make everything it touches worse
The new and improved….
It’s the fear of missing out if it’s the paradigm changing new thing.
When Theranos was trying cut a deal with Walgreens to put the non-existent Edison machines in the stores, Walgreen’s due diligence team basically called it a fraud. The Walgreen higher ups still went forward with the deal on the chance it was real they didn’t want to miss out on a big opportunity.
That’s why so many VCs invested in FTX. All their research came up that SBF was full of shit but they still went forward because they didn’t want to miss out if it worked out.
Remember metaverse? Same thing.
I think this will be big, if it isn’t already, and they all want to be the go-to platform. I could be wrong and so could they but it answers your question.
After using Generative AI to help with legal issues, I found it extremely helpful. It is the next big thing. Tech companies are in the business to find the next big thing and move fast especially if there is a lot of money in it.
Being the first to market usually means you have the largest market share. Big tech has deep pockets and they think they must spend to stay in front or to be left behind. Eg. microsoft missed out on the Internet/browser war. Yahoo got left behind and generally is now irrelevant.
Google has like 80% of the search market. But begin served up links, that you have to goto to read is a PITA. Generative AI gives you more of a real answer.
it’s investment in future. the more people use it, the smarter and more efficient it becomes. Otherwise, if they don’t do it right now, tomorrow will be too late.
Same thing with electric cars – they’re pretty much useless, expensive if they break and still use electircity from sources which are worse than filling your car up with gasoline. But if the companies don’t push their EVs to the market now, next year will be too late. and so on.
to understand how far ahead the companies are thinking, remember Uber – they have the biggest fleet of cars with drivers hired through subsidiaries. And the company is not profitable at all. Yet, they are patient for driverless technology to become efficient and worth using, and this is where they get rid of all drivers and start making huge $$$
Investors. Companies want to look like they are ahead of the game with AI so they can attract investors
a little different than what you’re asking but it’s super useful with Microsoft Teams at work. you can ask it questions and it will look through all your chats with every person and every meeting you’ve been it that has ever mentioned the topic. It’s very useful for requirements gathering for technical designs for example.
They invested an enormous amount of money assuming it was going to be the next big thing, now they have to make what they have pay off.
Investors are worried about missing out on a big hit so businessmen must take it seriously or get fired. Also, even if there’s only one genuinely useful application out there, every business is dreaming of being the one to find it and make millions.
Also it’s marketing hype for any machine -learning based tool because “AI” sounds fancier than “autocomplete like in your text messages but way more expensive and complicated”
Because many people actually do want it and these companies are in a frenzy trying to capture this rapidly growing market.
Just look at the commercially most successful example.
ChatGPT is the 7th most visited website on the internet.
It has 400 million weekly active users (use it at least once a week) by February 2025
About 120 million users use it daily.
It processes about 1 billion queries a day.
And they are growing rapidly they gained 100 million new users in just the first two months of this year and it went viral afterwards so probably even more.
You hear from people that don’t like it, but hundreds of millions of people actually want it and actively use it.
Google and Meta are trying to take advantage of their established userbase of billions and convert them to using their AI, before they jump ship to ChatGPT by OpenAI.
It’s the latest buzz word that gets the investor money.