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If "AI" doesn't attract customers why are companies hyping it so hard? Are they just dumb or is there another factor? (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 months ago by Acamon@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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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?

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[-] nednobbins@lemm.ee 11 points 3 months ago

A lot of people have come to realize that LLMs and generative AI aren't what they thought it was. They're not electric brains that are reasonable replacements for humans. They get really annoyed at the idea of a company trying to do that.

Some companies are just dumb and want to do it anyway because they misread their customers.

Some companies know their customer hate it but their research shows that they'll still make more money doing it.

Many people that are actually working with AI realize that AI is great for a much larger set of problems. Many of those problems are worth a ton of money; (eg. monitoring biometric data to predict health risks earlier, natural disaster prediction and fraud detection).

[-] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 months ago

Many people that are actually working with AI realize that AI is great for a much larger set of problems. Many of those problems are worth a ton of money; (eg. monitoring biometric data to predict health risks earlier, natural disaster prediction and fraud detection

None of those are LLMs though, or particularly new.

[-] nednobbins@lemm.ee 3 points 3 months ago

You're right. They're not LLMs and they're not particularly new.

The main new part is that new techniques in AI and better hardware means that we can get better answers than we used to be able to get. Many people also realize that there's a lot of potential to develop systems that are much better at answering those questions.

So when people ask, "Why are companies investing in AI when customers hate AI." Part of the answer is that they're investing in something different than what most people think of when they hear "AI".

this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2024

277 points (98.3% liked)

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