Because VC money depends on the company’s growth plans, and VC money isn’t offered if “AI” isn’t part of the product any more. (Sample size of one, told by a friend who’s in direct contact with the CEO.)
And also I suspect most companies work with big consultants like Bain and McKinsey because they (the companies) are scared and clueless and have no vision about how to run their businesses, which is perfect for them (the big consultants) to extract value from them with smoke up their holes and predictions about a future no one has ever seen yet.
:-) I have had my share of bad meetings over this, I have always advocated to start with enhancing existing features of product that would benefit from AI. But the org mandate is compulsory one idea for each product and new products should be agentic or RAG based only. I don't understand this rush to incorporate AI, I feel shit must be organic and self paced, forced adoptions wont last long.
It boils down to this: Nobody is willing to bet against AI right now.
If you're an investor, you're probably managing other people's money. Would you want to explain to your customers if & when you were wrong, why you didn't go all in on AI? This is the most transformative technology humanity has ever conceived and we've been making sci fi movies about for decades, and didn't put all our money into it?
So now that investor money is too scared to go anywhere else, that means if you're a CEO who cares about your share price, and who has to front up to the board every few weeks and defend your strategy lest they fire you, you must care about AI too. We aren't just a stiff old database anymore, noooo sir, we are the context layer for agents.
So now, if you're the CTO, are you going to tell the CEO that AI has no use case here? Not if you care about your job. Repeat, all the way down to the bottom.
There will be an emperor has no clothes moment. It might not be as dramatic as everyone is hoping, and it doesn't mean AI isn't world changing and is not here to stay, but the survival-induced psychosis at every level of the corporate world is absolutely unsustainable.
That was a relief. I thought users want it. I can understand investors being dumbfucks in grasping actual customer needs or to be completely ignorant about it.
As someone who has experience building a small AI powered company and making these decisions on a small scale, I can say maybe?
For some companies, automation that is based on being able to pull info from a gigantic knowledge base that still has bounds is helpful for them. Most orgs are still figuring this out in the face of immense pressure from their stakeholders not to fall behind and miss any potential windfall. They don’t know how LLMs can help them but the hype may push them in the black or lead to (false) growth so they lean in.
I think many of the larger tech companies were hoping to make human engineers obsolete so that they could achieve the true promise of SaaS - almost no investment, instant money faucet. Unfortunately for them, we still need people to help us understand people so engineers, designers, and product managers aren’t as expendable as some of them were hoping.
No one thought AI would be free or cheap, but a LOT of ppl bet that the true cost could be obfuscated or waved away temporarily while the money was stupid and then revealed once enterprise was addicted and struggled to manage their switching costs. By then the smartest folks have made their money, moved it to safer havens, and await the next stage of the lifecycle.
I love LLMs but the way we use them seems very stupid, IMHO. It’s like everything is a screw now but everyone still has bolts and nails.
No, certainly not necessary in all cases. It's a marketing approach: companies want to find an edge and a way to indicate they're progressing and leading, so they find a way to attach AI to whatever they do. Only a fraction of these are worthwhile, and in most cases users would be better off by using their own AI directly.
Having attended startup school this weekend, we were told how, in the past, companies were reluctant to try new technology from startups, AI products, etc., because they were unvalidated and unsure of how they would work. Now, companies are more worried that they're going to be left behind and that their competitors will beat them if they do not adopt these new technologies.
I consult on the topic of technology for non-technology companies (think like a hydraulic piston manufacturer or something. They consume software in order to create something else.)
Basically if the technical leaders at such companies fail to shoehorn AI in somewhere, they will have to find a way to demonstrate to their board of directors that they are keeping up to date and not allowing the business to settle in to abandonware. The guys selling the software also have a similar problem -- industrial abandonware whose development team was laid off 12 years ago is for sale right now and you have to be careful not to accidentally spend a million dollars on it. Something that has AI bolted on, even in an insignificant capacity, is more likely to have present day relevance.
There's a lot to your point. Tech companies with barely functioning enterprise software products (or worse, companies that can acquire other companies and their enterprise products) can burn the bridge to the past by de-investing in legacy maintenance (laying off staff and expertise, cutting support), and forcing the existing user base to accept AI-fueled reboots. Buyers are sent back to market and the choice is between Behemoth Who's All in on AI's Latest VaporWareAI or Legacy Software that Works But Is a Sitting Duck.
It's an industry-wide excuse/opportunity to force what was a stagnant commodity enterprise software market back into a new buying cycle with enough face-saving modernization chrome that buyers can make spending justifications.
At best, this will be a de-evolutionary enshittification local minima era followed by a slow rebuild. More likely, the enshittification era will collapse under its own hyperinflated weight when the logrolling bubble pops, and there will be a consolidation of incremental gains, with a few new benefits being added to what would otherwise look on a long term scale as typical linear innovation if it were not for the hype bubble.
If the AI is deeply integrated and feature-rich, I would prefer it. However, if it is just a disconnected chat interface, I don't think it is necessary. Additionally, whether it requires an extra fee is a factor that must be considered.
I think for a good share of products it isn't necessary, but I also guess that it's very hard to see from the start. I strongly believe there generally is value in AI, but finding this particular application that unlocks it -- is a conundrum. So, if I imagine myself being a head/vp of product, in one of these companies, I have pretty much no choice but to integrate it and study the metrics. Then, after a few iterations the value is either found or not, and depending on the sanity of stakeholders, the useless AI features can be retired. But not before the evidence is collected, because you can't fight the AI frenzy without ones, lol
Product owners were promised that LLMs/AI is a magical genie that can do anything, so they make it do everything. The trillions of dollars spent on data centers and thousands of layoffs has to be justified somehow.
This. In many cases, they cannot even properly articulate how AI will improve things beyond vague, meaningless, corporate-speak jargon. Most cannot even properly define AI’s place in the org in the first place. They just cannot be seen as someone who is “behind the times” or “a tech dinosaur”.
ok but it's in a lot of places where it seems totally unnecessary. For example, I do not need an AI chatbot to help me decide what kind of pizza to order.
But what if the AI told you that the pizza you are about to order sucks (or informs you that the people making it didn't wash their hands) and recommended you try a different place that was better (e.g. closer, cheaper)?
I've found the new AI customer support bots that a lot of websites started using are usually more knowledgeable and honest about whatever product they represent than human agents are. I'm sure that will change eventually when they start figuring out how to lock down the AI to a "safe script" the same way they train human customer support, but for now, it's pretty great.
because every company also has an "AI transformation" budget / CxO / whatever. if anyone wants to buy or sell any products or services for any unrelated reasons, it's much easier if they tick some AI-enablement checkbox, and much harder if they don't.
Because it scales directly off of the only thing that lots of businesses bring to the table: capital.
AI doesn’t need expertise, the nurturing of a company culture, or any of the hard to quantify things that make humanity worthwhile and good businesses functional. All it needs is cold hard cash.
Its really simple. companies dont care if people are getting jobs. they just want profits. assume the ai is another person. would you choose a person who writes a code in 1 month or the person who writes it in minutes? its that simple.
"AI" is like "the cloud", in the sense that the average CEO cannot articulate exactly what it is, but it is essential for any future scenarios they can imagine. They don't know exactly how, but "isn't it obvious?"
Because it's very publicly claimed to be the path to approximately infinite dollars. And therefore if they don't pursue it and get left behind, the CEO and the board are going to be fired. Whereas if they try it and it fails, it was "a prudent business risk".
There are most likely many different reasons. Cutting costs is a big one; leveraging new functionality in a simpler way is another one. For instance, yesterday I watched some youtube videos and one use case was "count to 100 in a very sad voice", even if that is more a joke and ... pretty useless on its own. The AI did.
What was interesting to me here was that if I were to write a program to do the same, I could most likely do that (just simplify the tasks as they are and implement each one), but it would take me longer. As much as I hate AI, there are real benefits in at the least some areas.
Because VC money depends on the company’s growth plans, and VC money isn’t offered if “AI” isn’t part of the product any more. (Sample size of one, told by a friend who’s in direct contact with the CEO.)
And also I suspect most companies work with big consultants like Bain and McKinsey because they (the companies) are scared and clueless and have no vision about how to run their businesses, which is perfect for them (the big consultants) to extract value from them with smoke up their holes and predictions about a future no one has ever seen yet.
:-) I have had my share of bad meetings over this, I have always advocated to start with enhancing existing features of product that would benefit from AI. But the org mandate is compulsory one idea for each product and new products should be agentic or RAG based only. I don't understand this rush to incorporate AI, I feel shit must be organic and self paced, forced adoptions wont last long.
It boils down to this: Nobody is willing to bet against AI right now.
If you're an investor, you're probably managing other people's money. Would you want to explain to your customers if & when you were wrong, why you didn't go all in on AI? This is the most transformative technology humanity has ever conceived and we've been making sci fi movies about for decades, and didn't put all our money into it?
So now that investor money is too scared to go anywhere else, that means if you're a CEO who cares about your share price, and who has to front up to the board every few weeks and defend your strategy lest they fire you, you must care about AI too. We aren't just a stiff old database anymore, noooo sir, we are the context layer for agents.
So now, if you're the CTO, are you going to tell the CEO that AI has no use case here? Not if you care about your job. Repeat, all the way down to the bottom.
There will be an emperor has no clothes moment. It might not be as dramatic as everyone is hoping, and it doesn't mean AI isn't world changing and is not here to stay, but the survival-induced psychosis at every level of the corporate world is absolutely unsustainable.
Someone I know said it's because investors get excited to know your product has AI.
That was a relief. I thought users want it. I can understand investors being dumbfucks in grasping actual customer needs or to be completely ignorant about it.
As someone who has experience building a small AI powered company and making these decisions on a small scale, I can say maybe?
For some companies, automation that is based on being able to pull info from a gigantic knowledge base that still has bounds is helpful for them. Most orgs are still figuring this out in the face of immense pressure from their stakeholders not to fall behind and miss any potential windfall. They don’t know how LLMs can help them but the hype may push them in the black or lead to (false) growth so they lean in.
I think many of the larger tech companies were hoping to make human engineers obsolete so that they could achieve the true promise of SaaS - almost no investment, instant money faucet. Unfortunately for them, we still need people to help us understand people so engineers, designers, and product managers aren’t as expendable as some of them were hoping.
No one thought AI would be free or cheap, but a LOT of ppl bet that the true cost could be obfuscated or waved away temporarily while the money was stupid and then revealed once enterprise was addicted and struggled to manage their switching costs. By then the smartest folks have made their money, moved it to safer havens, and await the next stage of the lifecycle.
I love LLMs but the way we use them seems very stupid, IMHO. It’s like everything is a screw now but everyone still has bolts and nails.
No, certainly not necessary in all cases. It's a marketing approach: companies want to find an edge and a way to indicate they're progressing and leading, so they find a way to attach AI to whatever they do. Only a fraction of these are worthwhile, and in most cases users would be better off by using their own AI directly.
Having attended startup school this weekend, we were told how, in the past, companies were reluctant to try new technology from startups, AI products, etc., because they were unvalidated and unsure of how they would work. Now, companies are more worried that they're going to be left behind and that their competitors will beat them if they do not adopt these new technologies.
> Why is every company encorporating AI everywhere?
To find ways to cut costs and, ideally, make more revenue. It's that simple.
I consult on the topic of technology for non-technology companies (think like a hydraulic piston manufacturer or something. They consume software in order to create something else.)
Basically if the technical leaders at such companies fail to shoehorn AI in somewhere, they will have to find a way to demonstrate to their board of directors that they are keeping up to date and not allowing the business to settle in to abandonware. The guys selling the software also have a similar problem -- industrial abandonware whose development team was laid off 12 years ago is for sale right now and you have to be careful not to accidentally spend a million dollars on it. Something that has AI bolted on, even in an insignificant capacity, is more likely to have present day relevance.
There's a lot to your point. Tech companies with barely functioning enterprise software products (or worse, companies that can acquire other companies and their enterprise products) can burn the bridge to the past by de-investing in legacy maintenance (laying off staff and expertise, cutting support), and forcing the existing user base to accept AI-fueled reboots. Buyers are sent back to market and the choice is between Behemoth Who's All in on AI's Latest VaporWareAI or Legacy Software that Works But Is a Sitting Duck.
It's an industry-wide excuse/opportunity to force what was a stagnant commodity enterprise software market back into a new buying cycle with enough face-saving modernization chrome that buyers can make spending justifications.
At best, this will be a de-evolutionary enshittification local minima era followed by a slow rebuild. More likely, the enshittification era will collapse under its own hyperinflated weight when the logrolling bubble pops, and there will be a consolidation of incremental gains, with a few new benefits being added to what would otherwise look on a long term scale as typical linear innovation if it were not for the hype bubble.
If the AI is deeply integrated and feature-rich, I would prefer it. However, if it is just a disconnected chat interface, I don't think it is necessary. Additionally, whether it requires an extra fee is a factor that must be considered.
I think for a good share of products it isn't necessary, but I also guess that it's very hard to see from the start. I strongly believe there generally is value in AI, but finding this particular application that unlocks it -- is a conundrum. So, if I imagine myself being a head/vp of product, in one of these companies, I have pretty much no choice but to integrate it and study the metrics. Then, after a few iterations the value is either found or not, and depending on the sanity of stakeholders, the useless AI features can be retired. But not before the evidence is collected, because you can't fight the AI frenzy without ones, lol
Product owners were promised that LLMs/AI is a magical genie that can do anything, so they make it do everything. The trillions of dollars spent on data centers and thousands of layoffs has to be justified somehow.
FOMO.
This. In many cases, they cannot even properly articulate how AI will improve things beyond vague, meaningless, corporate-speak jargon. Most cannot even properly define AI’s place in the org in the first place. They just cannot be seen as someone who is “behind the times” or “a tech dinosaur”.
Every company is not incorporating AI everywhere. It maybe seems that way and of course it's "everywhere" but not every single company.
ok but it's in a lot of places where it seems totally unnecessary. For example, I do not need an AI chatbot to help me decide what kind of pizza to order.
But what if the AI told you that the pizza you are about to order sucks (or informs you that the people making it didn't wash their hands) and recommended you try a different place that was better (e.g. closer, cheaper)?
What you can do is use AI to drive your browser to navigate the maze of "deals" on offer to actually find the best one for you as a consumer.
You probably don't need the AI _they_ shoehorn in.
I've found the new AI customer support bots that a lot of websites started using are usually more knowledgeable and honest about whatever product they represent than human agents are. I'm sure that will change eventually when they start figuring out how to lock down the AI to a "safe script" the same way they train human customer support, but for now, it's pretty great.
because every company also has an "AI transformation" budget / CxO / whatever. if anyone wants to buy or sell any products or services for any unrelated reasons, it's much easier if they tick some AI-enablement checkbox, and much harder if they don't.
From the POV of a CEO(not myself), it's a predictably priced, affordable insurance against potentially falling behind the competition.
Because it scales directly off of the only thing that lots of businesses bring to the table: capital.
AI doesn’t need expertise, the nurturing of a company culture, or any of the hard to quantify things that make humanity worthwhile and good businesses functional. All it needs is cold hard cash.
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48964185
If enough people/companies are on the bandwagon, you're afraid to push back and be the crazy one, potentially losing money. So you roll with it.
Its really simple. companies dont care if people are getting jobs. they just want profits. assume the ai is another person. would you choose a person who writes a code in 1 month or the person who writes it in minutes? its that simple.
it's like GeoCities from the 1990's, 99% of it looks rubbish, and if any % of it even work's - it would be truely shocking.
The reason of cause is that we are all doing AI wrong ;) 18 billion articles later and I am sure we will still be in the same position.
The great distraction, just think if we spent the same amount of time, effort and money on things that really mattered (climate emergency)
I don't mind AI being added to products, I just want it to solve a real problem instead of becoming another button that I never click.
AI is well and good until it touches the product in any possible way. Please integrate in your own yard not in user's face.
Peer pressure / fear of losing competitiveness to rivals / latest band wagon to get promoted via
Because AI is a productivity tool, and AI is the future.
It's literally brought the quality down on certain websites. I am like why
supply chain related stock? company ROI plus vs personal ROI?
"AI" is like "the cloud", in the sense that the average CEO cannot articulate exactly what it is, but it is essential for any future scenarios they can imagine. They don't know exactly how, but "isn't it obvious?"
Because it's very publicly claimed to be the path to approximately infinite dollars. And therefore if they don't pursue it and get left behind, the CEO and the board are going to be fired. Whereas if they try it and it fails, it was "a prudent business risk".
To make the line go up.
There are most likely many different reasons. Cutting costs is a big one; leveraging new functionality in a simpler way is another one. For instance, yesterday I watched some youtube videos and one use case was "count to 100 in a very sad voice", even if that is more a joke and ... pretty useless on its own. The AI did.
What was interesting to me here was that if I were to write a program to do the same, I could most likely do that (just simplify the tasks as they are and implement each one), but it would take me longer. As much as I hate AI, there are real benefits in at the least some areas.
If you haven't watched Mike Judge's Silicon Valley, you should: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-GVd_HLlps
It was about Web 2.0, then we had "big data", then right before the pandemic we put things on the "blockchain", then Web3, and now it's A.I.