For all the glittery brochures trying to convince me artificial intelligence will be my lord and savior by next Tuesday, there’s an equal pile of evidence suggesting that AI is nothing more then a steaming heap of desperate marketing horse shit. AI is getting stuffed into every freaking device on this spinning dirt ball so recklessly that it’s actually making me despise it more than my neighbor’s Pomeranian – little bastard won’t shut up, ever.

I read some fascinating, mind-blowing science from the Journal of Hospitality Marketing Management recently, and it was quoted by the ‘esteemed’ Wall Street Journal, which found that people are actively running away screaming, from products claiming AI powers. I swear to God, somebody paid good money to figure out that telling people their obsolete tech has become sentient and is plotting your downfall is slightly off-putting, end of last week.

The head genius behind this groundbreaking revelation, is Dogan Gursoy from the Washington State University, and the man (I guess it’s man – have you ever heard of a woman called Dogan? It has this male Slavic zing to it doesn’t it?), anyways, I am drifting off slightly, where was I?

Oh yeah, Drogan discovered that the average schmo who is shopping online would rather hear meaningless phrases like “wowawiewa – cutting-edge tech” than the much more pretentious and annoying phrase “AI-powered”. I mean, honestly, who doesn’t dream of waking up and whispering your daily commands to your alarm clock in fluent Python or whatever language these robots speak nowadays.

And to prove this, the researchers split guinea pigs – sorry, I mean “human participants” – into two groups, and feeding one ads plastered with “AI-powered” and the other with vaguely promising tech gibberish like we’re all accustomed to, and lo and behold, the AI-labeled junk was about as popular as reading my Monday blog twice.

Now who would have guessed that normal humans prefer appliances that simply ’ do their job without self-awareness or delusions of domination.

Does the thing make toast?

Ah, great.

I don’t need my toaster second-guessing my diet, thank you very much. . .

Ya smug little sentient prick.

And there was another related piece of enlightened scholarship, this time from Parks Ass. (no, it ain’t third person you twat. It stands for ‘associates’), and he axed four thousand fine Americans what they thought about “AI-powered” garbage. And you know what? Yeah, fifty-eight percent straight-up shrugged, 24 percent actually said it made them actively hate the product more, and a measly 18 percent (let’s call them “venture capitalists”) somehow believed AI was a selling point, at the end of the poll.

Now, not to stir conspiracy theories, but I’m pretty sure that the last 18 percent is secretly holding piles of AI stock, and that they are cackling maniacally every time some poor sap like me falls for a smart fridge that promises deep philosophical insights along with my milk that has gone slightly off, cause their was no more budget for real innovations.

Shocking stuff man!

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So it turns out that ‘average’ people are not exactly foaming at the mouth for AI in, like, everything. But considering that most college kids today wouldn’t recognize original thought if it mugged them, perhaps this phenomenon is simply generational, at the end of their four-year charade.

The Parks survey also got into this too – awww they’re so academic – and they discovered that younger folks aged 18 to 44 (snif) showed slightly less contempt for AI than their senior (ouch) counterparts, who told the survey people “nein danke” in massive droves, but even the younger crowd wasn’t terribly impressed, as only a quarter or so fell for the marketing charlatanism of “AI” branding, by the end of the study.

You know why nobody trusts ‘powered by AI’?

It’s because deep down even Chad McFratboy, who uses ChatGPT to churn out essays at midnight between shots of N-methyl-1-phenylpropan-2-amine, knows exactly that the AI is still mostly crap at solving real problems that require common friggin’ sense, at the end of the semester.

Now ask yourself the following question. . . exactly what the frock is the point of an AI-powered vacuum cleaner? Do you really think it can outsmart my Dachshund hair situation, that is spreading faster than gossip? Don’t answer THAT – your bullsheet explanation would just make me angrier and more sarcastic, je ne sais quoi.

Oh, and let’s not forget that little problem of AI-powered junk that tends to spy on you constantly. Yes, brilliant, because what I always wanted was my camera secretly selling data about the times I wear my undies and when I am not. End of the privacy agreement.

There might’ve been a brief, misguided moment in history – about eight minutes, two years ago exactly – when “AI-enhanced” sounded impressive, but now it just feels like you’re being stalked by all your devices and not in a fun way.

If you’re gonna sell something with AI, it better actually friggin’ do something smart, rather than just claiming that it’s smart. Marketing departments need to get off their lazy arses and tell me precisely how their “smart” toaster saves me from the unbearable burden of pressing the lever myself, merci beaucoup.

Bottom line is simple, my dear marketers. . . stop tossing around “AI” as if it’s the magical sauce that makes your overpriced garbage magical, and bother explaining how your ridiculous products will actually make my sad little life marginally less unbearable.

Thank you. Now piss off you lazy marketer.

Signing off,

Marco

I build AI by day and warn about it by night. I call it job security. Let’s keep smashing delusions with truth. We are the chaos. We are the firewall. We are Big Tech’s PR nightmare.

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