Technology

When the lawnmower was invented in 1830 it created the unrealistic expectation that all well-heeled properties have carefully manicured lawns with flat cut grass. Suddenly even people who had no desire or interest in gardening were expected to own lawn tools and do yard work to adhere to the new expectation. That expectation spread across the world and now lawnmowers and yard tools are a multi-billion dollar industry that consumes everyone's time for no good reason. It's just part of human culture now. Every year all the supposedly intelligent, free-willed humanoids living on Earth dedicate their scant time, wealth, and resources to cut weeds near their domiciles only because it is expected of them. It accomplishes no positive benefit. It is a net waste of time and energy. It is a purely harmful thing to do. But if you ask anyone about it, they will initially be convinced it's a good thing because they don't actually think about it with logic. They just keep doing it because for the past 200 years we have all been doing it.

It's very possible AI will turn out to be a similar thing.