So a company's success today may depend on how clickbaity their business model is.
Apparently since success=valuation and not profit.
'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
51–60 of 177 posts
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#52My 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.
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#53My favourite is Allbirds that pivoted from eco friendly shoes to AI infrastructure. How do you even make that decision?
[deleted]
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#54There's this new misplaced belief that most how of stock market works is by fooling the stock market with short term plays like this rebranding and then cashing out. Its attractive and speaks to the cynic in us. The article gives three examples - Allbirds, a shoe company - A genetics company marketing that it is using AI - a property tech company using AI to create 3rd landscapes The Allbirds one is just financial re…
Oh, come on. The specific use that the genetics company is marketing is "AI blood tests", which is obviously crap and also works to remind the reader of Theranos, which I'm sure is why you didn't mention that.
In the same paragraph as the genetics company, they also mention an "AI-powered basketball hoop" and "AI-powered lasers that – somehow – protect women from predators on crowded underground platforms." Very reasonable stuff that you forgot to mention.
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#55Of course most companies can't effectively surf the wave of an extremely rapidly evolving technology. They all want to look like they are, though.
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#56My favourite is Allbirds that pivoted from eco friendly shoes to AI infrastructure. How do you even make that decision?
It's not really a pivot though, is it? As I understand it, the company went bust and sold their branding to a different company that wants to do AI infra.
why not Aibirds then, it's almost like Allbirds?
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#57I'd love to read the mind of an investor that actually falls for this shit. Who actually thinks that Allbirds will see much higher returns because they "have an AI graphics division?" I like AI, but seriously, who actually invests on this basis? Where is the critical thinking? I don't feel sympathy for any investor that gets rug pulled on this stuff.
The same investor who will buy SpaceX at 250 PE. They are all over the place, hence all the AI washing.
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#58I think a lot of people are secretly wishing for AI to be like the crypto grift but are in for a rude shock when it is definitely not going to end up like that. We will see more and more companies become AI driven and produce AI products. To think otherwise is naive.
I mean, frankly, no one really gets hurt by starting to use the technology only once it is in its well tested phase and known. The situations where you need to be early adopter are quite rare.
All those threats of "maximize token spend or else something unspecified horrible happens to you in the future" are super weird.
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#59I heard an anecdote from a good friend about the opposite side of this. He manages a pub/restaurant and has a neat story about how this has changed.
At the height of COVID, food photography was very important. Because of distancing requirements and his kids health, he didn’t really have access to hiring photographers and so he invested in a good camera and a tripod, and started to learn to be restaurant’s photographer. Six years later and he’s still the photographer but he’s back to using an iPhone and he’s forgotten a lot about composition because obviously not AI generated has become a differentiator.
Re: 'AI washing': firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
#602 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.
Lol yes, I was at a real estate company and their "AI tech" was scraping commercial listings and putting in Elastic Search. CEO really thought the query was AI