IBM was a technology leader
Now, all they care about is having the sales staff close to the customers and the tech workers in India
I miss the old IBM

The problem is executives who hate creativity and continue to insist on sequels, remakes, reboots, franchises and other assorted retelling of old stories

...that future AI will provide excellent customer service.
Today's AI should be viewed as an early stage research project and closely supervised and measured

There are a lot of smart people in India, life is tough, and I can't blame them for trying hard to get ahead

US companies are driven by the insane rule that the only thing that matters is increasing shareholder value. Nothing else matters. Not the product, the customers, the employees, the environment, nothing. I suspect that it may be true in some cases that outsourcing to India produces good results, I also suspect that more commonly, managers don't care about quality as long as the price is low

I don't blame the Indian workers, and kinda feel a bit sorry for them, especially since AI tools will likely put them all out of work

...it's kinda similar to a lot of pop music.
Pop music is not about creativity or talent, it's an artless, industrial product, created by teams of mercenaries for the sole purpose of making money.
They make it sound familiar and extremely similar to what's already popular, but just barely different enough to sound "new" and "fresh".
They are doing exactly what an AI does.

I have been writing code since 1972. I am currently studying AI programming in python. I try to learn something new every day
I am definitely not a technophobe!
I find smartphones to be mostly useless. Yes, I can use one in a dire emergency, but overall, I dislike them.
The tiny screen and tiny text require me to find my most powerful reading glasses. The tiny touchscreen is almost unusable and it takes a lot of fumbling and mistyping to slowly compose anything.
Yes, the processing power is exceptional, but the UI is only usable for those with great eyesight and the kind of manual dexterity that works with the touchscreen.
I live my digital life on a desktop computer, with a 32" 4K display, mouse and high quality keyboard

Only those with talent should learn. It takes a special kind of mind to be good at coding, and not all can do it.
Everyone who works with code should master the AI tools, but use them as tools, not as a substitute for understanding.
Totally relying on a robot to do all the work with nobody able to understand what they made is a recipe for disaster

The free version will last long enough to get users hooked, then a subscription will be required
Kinda like the drug dealers our parents warned us about

... that the U.S. is locked in an existential struggle with China for AI supremacy

I question it and see it differently
The competition is not between the US and China, it's monopolists and governments vs open source
If a government or monopolist ends up owning the tech, it becomes a weapon
If it's available to all, it can be a tool

First, it's gambling
Second, it's gift cards
Third, it's a trivial amount of money

Few people know enough about statistics to accurately assess odds and some simply hate gambling
Gift cards suck and are associated with scams
Do it with meaningful amounts of cash

Open source is good, much better than control by monopolists or governments
All of science, engineering, art and music benefit when ideas are shared

For people who don't use smartphones

...my gas furnace. I live in Northern California.
I asked the salesman about heat pumps. He said they were not recommended in our area.
Price was not a consideration, I would have paid extra for a heat pump.
I got a gas furnace.
I find it odd that people who live in colder climates are posting here that heat pumps work for them.
Maybe the cold weather ones are not available in the US?
Maybe the salesman had a lot of dissatisfied heat pump customers?
I'm confused

..in the olympics of bad ideas
This is multitasking taken to a pathological extreme

Talk therapy is close to useless
It's hard to imagine that a chatbot could be worse