This might read a bit negative, but I am genuinely curious. What is the use case for AI for ordinary people?
With big tech building AI data centers like there is no tomorrow — which might be true for some of them (fingers crossed) – I’m left wondering; for what?
In which scenario will we need so much AI compute?
I get it for developers, which is what Microsoft and Anthropic is targeting. These are the users that are easiest to reach, due to their already established relationship with the tech companies.
Microsoft has their own annual conference, Microsoft Build, which was mostly about AI this year. “Build the thing that builds the thing“. No surprise there.
One thing that is surprising is that Atrophic, the company behind Claud, the number one programming AI, won’t even build a Mac app themselves. They have, just as everybody else, made an Electron app. If I were selling finance software, I probably would not use Excel for my own finances.
So, developers use AI. But they are already onboard the AI train and doing just fine. How much more compute do they need?
Then we have what used to be search. “I never search anymore, I just ask AI” is something I’ve heard more than once. And to be fair, it is hard to avoid it these days. The top result on Google is an answer from Gemini, their AI model.
So, some people, use ChatGPT or Gemini or CoPilot as a search engine. We ask questions; to find recipes, how to fix things around the house or do some risky changes on a production server. But even then you should check the sources. At least I do, because that’s what I learned at school1.
Not just because the sources might be wrong, but it might also be the case that the AI summarized it just a tad too much. Leaving out some important nuances, or making some assumptions it shouldn’t.
I also heard people talk to ChatGPT as if it were a good friend or confidant2.
Is this the use case that will generate growth? If so, who will pay for it? Because I’m sure that if you suddenly had to pay to talk to ChatGPT about how you should feel about something, that conversation would stop once the first bill arrives.
Then we have people that use AI to write for them. The text doesn’t always make sense, but that’s ok. People who don’t like to write usually don’t like to read either, so for them it makes no difference. But again, how much would you be willing to pay to let an AI write an email for you?
But wait. What about video and audio production? Sure, that might be a market. But I bet there is not a market to consume all this AI generated video, audio and images. If I see an article online with an AI generated image, I’m out of there before the dickover shows up. It just isn’t worth the time.
Or maybe I’m wrong, and that the zombie kids of tomorrow happily will watch 16 hours of AI generated crap filled with ads each day.
One way for these companies to make money is of course by force. Microsoft can say: “you need a subscription that includes CoPilot if you want to continue to use Windows”. Because they have already built CoPilot into everything from Excel to Notepad.
But even then it is just force to pay. Not force to use. Because, again, what shall people use CoPilot for? Realisticly?
I recently opened Outlook on my phone – because work – and I was confused for a few seconds. Instead of just one icon to add a new event, as there has always been, there was now two. And the second one was CoPilot.
I fail to see the point though. If you click on it, it will just open a prompt asking you for questions. It takes more time to prompt it to add an event than it takes clicking on an empty slot in the calendar, set the time, subject, and click “save”.
After creating said event, I would still need to check it afterwards, opening up the same interface that I would use to manually fill in the information in the first place.
And while I do believe in using AI as a tool, I don’t see a use case that will justify the billions that have been, and continue to be, funneled into it.
So once Oracle and Microsoft has burned through their cash building data centers. And OpenAI and Anthropic has burned through their cash (and others) and find themselves unable to pay for the use of these data centers. Who will use them?
What is the use case for AI?
- I learned not to trust anything found on the internet, once the internet made its appearance that is. ↩︎
- As John Gruber of Daring Fireball writes: There’s something wrong with people who consider today’s chatbots to be their friends or companions.
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