> The freak stampede of all these tech giants to shove AI down everybody's throat just shows that they perceive the technology as having huge potential to advance the above agenda, for themselves, or for their competitors at their detriment.
I think there are more mundane (and IMO realistic) explanations than assuming that this is some kind of weird power move by all of software. I have a hard time believing that Salesforce and Adobe want to advance an agenda other than selling product and giving their C-suite nice bonuses.
I think you can explain a lot of this as:
1. Executives (CEOs, CTOs, VPs, whatever) got convinced that AI is the new growth thing
2. AI costs a _lot_ of money relative to most product enhancements, so there's an inherent need to justify that expense.
3. All of the unwanted and pushy features are a way of creating metrics that justify the expense of AI for the C-suite.
4. It takes time for users to effectively say "We didn't want this," and in the meantime a whole host of engineers, engineering managers, and product managers have gotten promoted and/or better gigs because they could say "we added AI" to their product.
There's also a herd effect among competing products that tends to make these things go in waves.
I think the real takeaway here is that Jensen Huang was smart enough to found a technology company that developed innovative products with real consumer demand. He's also smart enough to have seen the writing on the wall regarding consumer market demand saturation for high-margin products. No matter what happens with AI, Huang will be recorded as having executed the greatest pivot of all time in terms of company direction.
I think there are more mundane (and IMO realistic) explanations than assuming that this is some kind of weird power move by all of software. I have a hard time believing that Salesforce and Adobe want to advance an agenda other than selling product and giving their C-suite nice bonuses.
I think you can explain a lot of this as:
1. Executives (CEOs, CTOs, VPs, whatever) got convinced that AI is the new growth thing
2. AI costs a _lot_ of money relative to most product enhancements, so there's an inherent need to justify that expense.
3. All of the unwanted and pushy features are a way of creating metrics that justify the expense of AI for the C-suite.
4. It takes time for users to effectively say "We didn't want this," and in the meantime a whole host of engineers, engineering managers, and product managers have gotten promoted and/or better gigs because they could say "we added AI" to their product.
There's also a herd effect among competing products that tends to make these things go in waves.