But it's completely different from companies adding ".com" to their name in the 90s!
'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
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Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#92My favourite is Allbirds that pivoted from eco friendly shoes to AI infrastructure. How do you even make that decision?
We live in an age when a guy who designed overblown mass-market "luxury" handbags and zero tech industry experience ends up in charge of software and hardware UX at the world's most successful mobile and computer hardware company. And be grossly incompetent, but still manage to last nearly a decade.
So.... Who's is it then?
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#93I seriously thought "AI washing" was going to be scrubbing all references to AI in public-facing documents.
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#94Do you guys remember when everything tried to become blockchain too? :’)
Don't forget NFT :)
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understand why companies try to brand themselves as the latest and greatest tech innovation. What I don't understand is why it works or who falls for it. It's quite trivial to determine whether or not this is e.g. transformer-based AI. I remember in the years before the pandemic that I would joke that all you had to do was "sprinkle in some blockchain" to your VC pitch and your valuation would automatically go up b…
> It's quite trivial to determine whether or not this is e.g. transformer-based AI. The people who are being marketed to with the AI term don't have any idea what that mean and AI, as a marketing term (the only way it's ever been, so far, commercially used) means a lot more than transformers. My dishwasher has "AI" because it has sensors that can detect where the most dishes are. The marketing term really just means…
> The people who are being marketed to with the AI term don't have any idea what that mean and AI
To clarify, I'm mainly talking about B2B-type businesses where the marketing is to investors or other large enterprises. Despite the fact that it's popular and in vogue to think of VCs and business leaders as idiots, most of them actually do understand what AI is and the difference between "modern" AI and basic automation.
And even if you're talking about end consumers, I feel like there is a growing backlash against AI and people will think of a business that touts their "AI dishwasher" or whatever as obvious bullshit and see it as a net negative.
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fun times. Although I find it hard to blame them tbh. They’re incentived to do so because apparently investors don’t understand the difference.
Or, investors do understand the difference, but think they're buying low to sell high to "greater fools." If the market can remain irrational longer than a fundamentals-driven investor can remain solvent, is it irrational to bet on the market remaining irrational?
I have seen both. I have heard some talking on live television about how it is a bubble, but it isn’t popping yet, so keep investing. Everyone seems to just be trying to get theirs while the party is still happening.
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#97> PR executives say UK companies are forcing them to present ordinary automation as artificial intelligence What a time to be alive
Remember when crypto was hot and everything had crypto. Remember the Internet was first hot and everything was iThis or Active That. iPhone still has i. Remember… well not, me, I wasn’t alive… when radiation was cool and Radioactive was in. Everyone always wants to be cool.
My favorite was block chain. A company I used to work for that was not a tech company, suddenly going on about the block chain. I saw former, non technical colleagues that were still there write long authoritative LinkedIn posts about the advantages of the block chain and it was incredibly cringey because I am not sure what they thought the block chain was, but I am confident they didn’t understand it at all.
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#98I hope these companies aren't in for a shock when the younger generation rejects their brands https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/920401/g... If negative perception towards AI grows, either because of negative experiences after having it forced on them, or as people's utility bills skyrocket, or as the environmental impact becomes more apparent, they might find that what appeals to shareholders doesn'…
My kid was an excited Duolingo user who immediately cut it off entirely as soon as he heard that they were doing something with AI. That was all it took. He heard "Duolingo's AI now" on some YouTube video, and it was immediately dead to him. I don't think people understand just how viscerally negative the perception of AI is for the youth.
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Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#99In 2005 there was one particular cyber security company that comes to mind that had AI claims on their front page. It was a perl script.
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#1002 yrs ago I saw some company raise a million dollars by saying they used AI, when what they did could easily be done with an algorithm. Many things can be algorithms, regex filters, logic or heuristics (spam detection is an example) but nowadays people want the llm to do it first, without even thinking.
I've been rejecting pitch decks like that for 2 years.