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'Worst in Show' CES products include AI refrigerators, AI companions and AI doorbells (apnews.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 88 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Have you ever seen the commercials from late 1800s where there is the word "electricity" in everything. Electrotherapy for every ill and electric solution for every type of drudgery, electrolyte drinks and whatnot. Same came with discovery of radioactivity. Radium drinks for long life and all that. AI is the modern buzzword for the modern snakeoil salesman.

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  • [–] 28 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    I remember a story my Dad told me. His boss comes in and goes "we need a computer" (this was the 80s). He asked "why". He couldn't answer.

    AI now is like that, except when someone asks "why", they get fired and the boss slams it in anyway. It doesn't make the product better or even more attractive. Dell has admitted that and is the only company to admit that. At best it's a shite search engine that's being forced on everyone against their will.

    AI chat bots should be OPTIONAL, not forced onto people against their will. At best it's a shitty search engine, at worse it is a slop machine.

    Only practical solution I can think of for an AI chatbot is an optional voice mode where you can go to, say, a ticket machine and be all "hey, cheapest fare to Dundee" or something and it gives you it, but that can be done without fucking the environment and eating all the ram by just having better UI design.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    AI chat bots are actually a useful workaround for shitty web uis now. When you don't know which icon is hiding the thing you want, you can just ask the AI to do it for you.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago
    1. I wonder how many enemies Dell made with that lol
    2. AI chatbots work as customer side if implemented well (if chatbot does not have options, it won't work well) and if customers don't knee-jerk into repeating they want human without checking it's options first (which, understandably, came from dealing with badly implemented chatbots). Their search is quite alright for polling public opinions (useful for example if you are lazy and wanna find overall popular film from some genre - it can summarise reddit, google, few review sites and spit the effects at you).

    I know, I know. We are anti-AI here. But please, don't be simply cynic. This tech has it's uses, but is so badly used across everything that it's hard not to be negative of it.

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