It's just really unusual to hear some of my biggest "early adopter" friends filled with bile for AI. And well I'm right there with them. I'm irritated most by the dishonesty of the claims about what it can do. With "internet of things" the objection was not "you can't track your water bottle on the internet, it won't work the way you describe" it was more like "why would you want to do that?" and "your data will be sold to companies, you will be spied on"

Both proved to be correct.

The "internet of things" failed to deliver on it's most exciting promises mostly due to corporate resistance to interoperability. Alexa can't make a google calendar event, your light system is in a war with the system that controls the thermostat.

Every company aimed for market dominance, boxing out the others, and it has made everything harder to use, more buggy and worthless.

But it's probably for the best that seamless control did not materialize. This is protecting us from 'agentic' AI agents running around causing even bigger problems.

Alexa struggles to communicate with different brands of lights, and this is by design in this desperate hope that people would lock in and buy everything from one company. AI agents will face even worse issues since the concept of interoperability isn't even on the radar of these clowns. They think they can just power through it.

I guess my point is that people who don't understand the tremendous power of non-corporate cooperation and interoperability inspired by a higher calling than making money will never be able to build anything very powerful since they will always be too busy fighting each other.

The internet is powerful because of the ways it is standardized. And the same people excited by that power generally try to destroy this aspect of the internet. Because that vast power can't be controlled by one person.