An invest of Trillions requires a matching return: who would pay that?
My doubts actually started with IoT. The idea of having all things in your home somehow smart, sounds vaguely interesting... until the next patch day comes around and you find that now you have to patch dozens or more vulnerable things, most of which are more designed to feed the vendor's data lakes than providing any meaningful empowerment or value.
I've also always marvelled at my car vs. my home: my car was made in 2010 so it isn't even new any more. yet everything inside is connected and "smart", will adjust to whoever is driving it automagically, things happen at the touch of a button or even on a voice command, if that were actually any easier or faster.
Of course, once I took the wrong key, the one which had all adjusted to a person half my size and I feared mutilation if not death as in I searched in total panic a way to halt the seat sqeezing me into the steering wheel... And since I never really came out of home-office, I tend to spend so little time in my car, I often can't even remember how to turn on the defrost when the season changes.
Yet sometimes I find myself wanting to click my key when I enter my home, especially when I carry my supplies, hoping the door would open just as automagically, perhaps even carry the darn boxes up two rather grand flights of stairs, as you see my home was built around 1830: mine is the part under the roof where the domestics used to live, who never found a worthy successor, but gave me perspective.
You see, Downton Abbey provided me with the perfect vision of what IoT should be: life with non-biological servants. Most importantly, life not with intelligence somehow scattered all across things, but with an absolute minimum of non-biological servants: one servant per domain, the butler for the shared family mansions, a valet or ladies maid for each individual's personal needs, a chauffeur for all inclusive transportation, an estate agent-secretary to manage all fortunes, that's it! Delegation for the lesser services like cleaning and food suply, scale-out for grand events, coordination amongst them, life-long memory for anything relevant would be all part of their job, not for me to worry about.
Alexa, Siri, Co-plot, none of them ever came close even envisioning that for me. And you know where their loyalty lies: Downton Abbey has plenty of proof what happens if servants are disloyal to their masters. Actually, what I really want aren't even servants that might just go off and marry or have a career of their own, but good old roman/greek non-bio-slaves where obedience is existential, even if it includes proper warnings against commands that might in fact be harmful. And I don't recall slaves ever being more loyal to their slavers than their owners. So just imagine how Apple would be treated by owners a few centuries or two millenia ago!
Yet, how much would all of that be worth to me or the vast majority of the poplation which are consumers?
Trillions after all means a thousand bucks for each individual with billions of consumers... And that is just the chips portion of what it requires to make it happen.
It comes back to my smart car: would I have paid extra to have all that intelligence in it?
Not really, I bought it used. It just happened to have all that stuff in it, and I would have rather liked to forego those "extras". I paid for the room, the transport capacity and it's ability to cruise the Autobahn at speeds I consider reasonable with adequate active safety.
It's really a lot like the electric sunroof which I couldn't opt out from: it limits the head-room every time I enter the car, yet by the time I find myself actually using it, it's typically broken and would be very expensive to repair: so it winds up just being a glass brick covered up 99% of the time. I'd have much rather had the cruise control, but a used car with these options wasn't on sale when I needed a replacement.
Same with the electric seats, which may be ever so slightly easier to adjust, once you've figured out how they work and how to keep them from breaking your bones. But they become one big giant liability if they're stuck in some ridiculous position, because my son wanted to show it off to his lovely but tiny girl friend.
Turns out the main reason I've never seriously considered making my home "smart" is the fact that I need it to function 100% of the time, I don't really have a backup if the door failed to open, the windows failed to close, or if chairs at the dinner table were suddenly glued to the floor.
So count me very sceptic when it comes for AI based automation creating empowerment with enough value and trustworthyness to choose the AI variant over the stupid one EVEN at EQUAL PRICE.
Chances of me actually paying extra? Very ultra slim with an extra dose of heavy convincing required.
But next comes the corporate angle, whence my disposable incomes currently comes.
Yes, there may be a lot more potential for money savings there, but how much AI are consumers going to spend on once it's reduced workforces by the percentages corporate consumers of AI are hoping for?
New jobs and opportunities take time to arrive and one thing is very sure: those investing billions if not trillions today cannot wait a decade for demand to pick up again. Their shareholders demand sustained order entries month by month, quarter by quarter and returns best within a year.
And that's where I see bloody noses coming all around already with Microsoft & Co. spending billions or the GDP of smaller countries on nothing but AI hardware.
I can hardly see myself using Co-pilot even if they force it into my desktop and my apps.
Actually, much of my late career has been worrying about IT-security and the very idea of Microsoft infusing every computer with an AI begging everyone to use it, gives me nothing but nightmares about the giant attack surface they are opening up: that company still doesn't even manage to print securely, decades after selling their first operating system, CP/M was safer than that!!
Much less I can see myself paying for it, nor do I see 90% of consumers paying a significant amount for it, either.
Sure, that's belly button economics, but I humbly consider myself mainstream and ordinary enough to represent your regular John Doe.
Investors spending billions and trillions need matching returns and I fear their desperation more than anything else about AI.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
