this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2026
697 points (98.5% liked)
Technology
78511 readers
3110 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Have you ever seen the commercials from late 1800s where there is the word "electricity" in everything. Electrotherapy for every ill and electric solution for every type of drudgery, electrolyte drinks and whatnot. Same came with discovery of radioactivity. Radium drinks for long life and all that. AI is the modern buzzword for the modern snakeoil salesman.
Shoe-fitting fluoroscope “in shoe stores from the 1920s until about the 1970s”
Good times
I remember a story my Dad told me. His boss comes in and goes "we need a computer" (this was the 80s). He asked "why". He couldn't answer.
AI now is like that, except when someone asks "why", they get fired and the boss slams it in anyway. It doesn't make the product better or even more attractive. Dell has admitted that and is the only company to admit that. At best it's a shite search engine that's being forced on everyone against their will.
AI chat bots should be OPTIONAL, not forced onto people against their will. At best it's a shitty search engine, at worse it is a slop machine.
Only practical solution I can think of for an AI chatbot is an optional voice mode where you can go to, say, a ticket machine and be all "hey, cheapest fare to Dundee" or something and it gives you it, but that can be done without fucking the environment and eating all the ram by just having better UI design.
I know, I know. We are anti-AI here. But please, don't be simply cynic. This tech has it's uses, but is so badly used across everything that it's hard not to be negative of it.
AI chat bots are actually a useful workaround for shitty web uis now. When you don't know which icon is hiding the thing you want, you can just ask the AI to do it for you.
At the same time, they could easily be a crutch. Why bother designing a good, accessible website if most of the users are just going to access it via a chatbot?
Like Bluetooth and IoT before it.
Very good comparison actually.