No matter what your opinion on AI is, you probably have one already. Positive or negative, AI discourse is hard to avoid. The most dedicated AI evangelists will tell you that: “AGI is around the corner. Your job? obsolete. You don’t think so? Well, see how much things improved from last year? imagine how it will be like in 5 years!” You’ve read everything that could be said about it already at least 10 times.
I’ve seen people trying to debunk all those claims but there’s something that I rarely see.
What could have been if instead of spending so much energy and resources on developing “AI features” we focused on making our existing technology better?
AI gets added into every software possible nowadays. Features almost no one wants, and no one needs, that only make the existing software worse. I’m sure you know what I mean, we have all been victims of it in some way or another.
(I would insert here one of those funny screenshots of Google telling you to eat rocks but you’ve seen it already)
It pains me to think about all the money being funneled into the AI bubble. Money that could have funded so many real solutions to real problems. There is a lot of software to be made, improved, and released, but the tech industry refuses to see this.
Tech executives are robbing every investor blind. Promising the biggest breakthrough in technology while our current technology rots to the core. The operative systems we run, the browsers we use, our critical infrastructure gets consistently neglected to chase a promised wonderland of automation that never arrives.
There isn’t a single day where I don’t have to deal with software that’s broken but no one cares to fix. And I know what AI enthusiast will say: don’t worry, AI will fix them for us!
On Bluesky I saw this post by Robin-Yann Storm:
Gamescom’s app added an AI feature this year and it did not go well. Folks were overwhelmed with automatically generated meeting requests that they did not want. It generated a lot of stuff, but not value.
The post contains an image of an email from Gamescom that reads:
Hello Robin-Yann, We tested a new feature today - the Al meeting generator. The aim was to suggest suitable business contacts based on your profiles and make it easier for you to plan your trade fair contacts. However, your honest feedback shows us that this feature does not provide the desired added value. We have therefore decided to completely remove the automatically generated meetings from your profiles. Thank you for your openness. Your feedback is a central component of our further development - together we will make the platform better. We apologize for any inconvenience caused. Your gamescom team
I’ve been to many conferences since I started working at the Godot Foundation, and they all have one thing in common: horribly broken meeting/networking apps. If you’ve been to a conference you probably already suffered them. The direct messages work half of the time leaving messages undelivered. Registered people missing when you search for them, but still visible if you open a direct link to their profile. Scheduling features that fail to process any kind of rescheduling. The list goes on.
People end up ditching them to network via other apps: linkedin, twitter, email, bluesky. But I still believe that the idea of a networking app for a conference is still good and should be pursued. So I ask: Why is adding AI the priority here? What could have been if the investment went into making these apps better?
I’m not naive. What motivates people to include AI everywhere is the promise of profit. What motivates most AI startups or initiatives is just that. A promise.
But, don’t you think that by making a good product you will achieve that profit? Your product doesn’t need AI to get more users, more money, more features. It just needs to be better.
Unfortunately, people making decisions (if there are any) only chase ghosts and short term profits. They don’t think that they are crippling their companies and dooming their long term profitability. The enshittification is a disease that will keep spreading trying to suck every ounce of life from every product until they are too weak to continue.
I could now finish the post by breaking down budgets of organizations such as Blender, Godot, or Ladybird and comparing them with those that the tech gigants are spending on chasing their AI dreams while delivering absolutely nothing of value. But it would be too depressing. Last time I did this, with just one company’s budget you could fund more than 100 years of real open-source software development. Solving real needs we have now. Improving software we use every day. Making critical infrastructure that our life depends on.
Even if we manage to snap out of the AI bubble, we are never going to get these years back. I can only be left to wonder what could have been.