Ask HN: Why is every company encorporating AI everywhere?

I consult on the topic of technology for non-technology companies (think like a hydraulic piston manufacturer or something. They consume software in order to create something else.)

Basically if the technical leaders at such companies fail to shoehorn AI in somewhere, they will have to find a way to demonstrate to their board of directors that they are keeping up to date and not allowing the business to settle in to abandonware. The guys selling the software also have a similar problem -- industrial abandonware whose development team was laid off 12 years ago is for sale right now and you have to be careful not to accidentally spend a million dollars on it. Something that has AI bolted on, even in an insignificant capacity, is more likely to have present day relevance.

ok but it's in a lot of places where it seems totally unnecessary. For example, I do not need an AI chatbot to help me decide what kind of pizza to order.

If you haven't watched Mike Judge's Silicon Valley, you should: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-GVd_HLlps

It was about Web 2.0, then we had "big data", then right before the pandemic we put things on the "blockchain", then Web3, and now it's A.I.

Its really simple. companies dont care if people are getting jobs. they just want profits. assume the ai is another person. would you choose a person who writes a code in 1 month or the person who writes it in minutes? its that simple.

Because it scales directly off of the only thing that lots of businesses bring to the table: capital.

AI doesn’t need expertise, the nurturing of a company culture, or any of the hard to quantify things that make humanity worthwhile and good businesses functional. All it needs is cold hard cash.