Well, I can think of some uses if it were actually up to the job. I'd often like to have it read something to me, but it would need to be able to understand the emotional background.
E.g.:
Strange thing are done neath the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold,
The arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold,
(etc.)

Or possibly have it read me The Lord of the Rings. And I have some fond memories of the radio program "X minus one".

But I *really* doubt that current AIs are up to that.

That's illegal no matter what tool you use, though, and it's not the tool that makes it illegal unless it was designed to do illegal things intentionally, or if you keep using it when you know it does illegal things. Adding AI isn't the legal problem. It's just a slightly new gimmick to the same old game, pretending you didn't know what you were doing.

Screenless is stupid. Screens are cheap now. By all means make it audio centric but if I just have to get out my phone to get any info that isn't convenient to get via audio, then I might as well just use my phone for the audio stuff too.

MCA was mind boggling. IBM is exactly not known for being cheap, and yet that's exactly what they did with MCA autoconfiguration by using floppies instead of ROM. Meanwhile they used a very expensive card edge connector when there was really no good reason to do so. It's truly insane.

People would believe in the hardware if they put it out, because IBM is not really known for exaggerating specs. But they don't seem to be able to.

I don't want even a new Samsung phone with its crappy nonstandard apps, let alone an old one which also has old Android.

Mega corporation advocates for regulatory capture, this is my surprised face

You don't have to like the forecast to track it against the news reports. (Of course, the news reports are often just PR, and you need to weigh that in.)

Sure, but putting storage online is cheaper both initially and ongoing than putting a bunch of GPGPU online, and in both power consumption and dollars. It can take up just as much space but use an order of magnitude less electricity, therefore be quieter, and have no one care

It might actually turn out good for IBM if the bubble pops sooner than later. Then they get to look smart for not participating when all the AI stocks (and the stocks of any other company that bet big) slump.

IBM has been more of a services company than a hardware company for decades, it's true. And yet, they are still a hardware company despite that, and their hardware is supposed to back up their services.

In fact if any politician caused the Internet boom it was Al Gore

"the race to AGI is of the same National Security importance as the race to be first for the Atomic Bomb.

Whomever reaches that goal first ( assuming it is reachable at all ) will enjoy an enormous advantage
over everyone else."

Or they just get burned for fuel first

Same for modern Christianity, despite women doing most of the reading of the religious works in the household at the beginning.

Faltered is right. Isn't IBM a hardware company among other things? Why didn't they have a hardware product to offer customers who wanted to experiment with throwing away money?