Procter & Gamble study finds AI could help make Pringles tastier, spice up Old Spice, sharpen Gillette Procter & Gamble says organizations should rethink how they're run to take better advantage of innovation enabled by generative AI. The consumer products giant has been AI-curious for several years and recently conducted a study to assess the technology's potential value to its operations. So with partial funding from Harvard …
> These are the people who make razors that deliberately go blunt quick so you have to buy a new one.
I forget which brand of razor I use but mine last for months. I think I've gone close to a year on the current cartridge of my multiblade contraption.
Of course, I've long been known as Captain Peachfuzz, my five o'clock shadow looks like about 7:15 AM, and my sad attempts to grow a beard have elicited comments like "Did you forget to shave this morning?" after six weeks, so hirsute I am not.
My biggest gripe with razor manufacturers is that by the time I eventually need new ones, they've stopped making the cartridges, so I need to buy a new handle, too.
I tried using Ai assistance a while ago for a technically complex problem of displaying a 3D object under multiple configurable lights and a moveable camera. The AI recommended which graphics library to use, gave API calls and lots of demo code. It would have been really useful, except that the library did not exist.
I'm not sure if this is a challenge of the the summarisation of their findings, but in the main body it talks of 'being comparable to working with another human' and finishes with 'this is a game changer'.
Nothing game changing about being able to do what we can already do and use far less energy and water.
Of course it is a game changer - they only have access to another human to work with for less than five minutes at a time, whereas the AI won't storm out, screaming "will you shut up about bloody Pringles!".
This is especially useful for R&D at Gillette (where they standardised on Chipples last year).
It would have been pretty amazing if a team of 10 AI researchers concluded that AI was a load of useless bollocks, considering the fact that such a conclusion would have put them all out of a job. This is just like those researchers in the 1950s who produced "research" proving the amazing health benefits of cigarettes, funded by tobacco companies.
It's just another corporate fad, sold to executives desperately looking for a bandwagon to jump on that promises to make them money. Remember when "synergy" was all the rage, and lots of people became "synergists" so they could hoover up the money being thrown at that miracle growth generator? Don't hear so much of them these days............
Yeah, but at least we'll still find plentiful supplies of Metamucil on the shelves, to keep us regular, seeing how it's made in Phoenix AZ ...
Still, it'd be nice if P&G could apply their game-changing innovation accelerator new-idea unlocker emotionally satisfying generative AI-assist cybernetic teammate to develop a few improved formulations of the product, as Liquid Plumr's successfully done, something like urgent clear, and hair eliminator, on top of clog destroyer and advanced action gel ... perty sure they'd be winners with consumers!
Or, and I know this is a radical thought in our Age of Idiocracy, but they could try ASKING THEIR DAMN CUSTOMERS what they would like.
However, this is indeed another shining examples of how customers only have false choices. For those of you born yesterday, please look up how many brand names P&G control.
I have seen an ad for a US bank, I think CaptialOne where the ad is just telling the viewer that they are using AI for business processes.
...Great. I guess. What is the corporate policy about binder clips or paper clips?
The only thing I am hearing is: "We are using AI to squeeze you and hard as we can and do questionable things with your money that isn't regulated and won't be because of US Congress and this administration."
Can't wait for the feature where CaptialOne AI is telling me I am not using my money as efficiently as possible and then show me ads where I can spend it.
Last year Coca-Cola did a limited run of a flavor that they claimed was designed by AI, called YT3000 or somesuch. It tasted like normal Coke but with too extra artificial sweetener in it, and when the initial novelty period passed nobody wanted it. After a couple weeks the local supermarket had put their stock of it on 50% discount just to get it off the shelves. (At the time I suspected that a bottling plant screwed up a batch of Coke Zero Sugar and rather than throw it out, they decided to try marketing it instead.)
With that in mind, it's probably safe to say that the only enhancing that P&G's AI will do is enhance the bank accounts of the consultants who sold them on the idea in the first place.
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