You're not. This is a big reason why "tech" went so all-in on AI.
The era of rapid innovation and rapid growth on phones is over. We hit "peak smartphone" in 2019-2020, look at a chart of iphone or Samsung models. Like a lightswitch they locked in on a specific design.
Hell, the more curmudgeon-y will complain that phones have degraded since. Gone is the 3.5mm jack, gone is the SD card slot. "Fuck you, buy our expensive bluetooth junk." "Fuck you buy our cloud storage".
(The reality is that consumers appear to prefer bluetooth audio and cloud storage, phones that do still retain the 3.5mm/sd card slot aren't gaining ground in the market. Sony is likely to close down their phone division in the upcoming years despite being one of the last holdouts.)
Hence all the desire in tech to find "The next iPhone", and the dozens of attempts to make "AI hardware" despite the fact that literally all of it has failed against the simple question of "why can't this be a smartphone/smartwatch app?"
This extends to AI in general. It can't just be a tool with some specific applications, it has to "Change The World", "Be the next iPhone".
1) The comparison is about the perception. While smartphones did "change the world", the iPhone in particular is given outsized weight in that. The tech industry since has just been a cargo cult trying to recreate it.
2) No, actually? It's not all that "clear". The current net-beneficial impacts are highly contained to software development, and even there it seems to be of dubious financial value.
This is the whole problem. AI has to be even more worldchanging, even more used, even more endlessly profitable than the smartphone. Companies are massively overinvested now, if AI turns out anything less than that, they're all fucked. The need to make "the next iPhone" has meant no product is allowed to be merely "very good".
Culturally, AI has already lost. People have always snarked about the iPhone being a luxury product that's too expensive compared to the competition, but the fundamental premise was always accepted. Even in today's era of widespread recognition that people are "on their phones too much", the smartphone itself isn't up for debate.
They loathe AI. Palantir is singing the praises of AI as a tool for fascism. There have been multiple attempts to attack Altman's house because of the "AI is so impactful it'll kill us all!" rhetoric. People are furious about what just the hype around AI alone is doing to the job market.
And in the background, everyone is aware that it's a bubble. That even if AI did everything promised and more, that it is physically impossible to build enough datacenters quickly enough and that the mass-unemployment will annihilate the economy.
You're not. This is a big reason why "tech" went so all-in on AI.
The era of rapid innovation and rapid growth on phones is over. We hit "peak smartphone" in 2019-2020, look at a chart of iphone or Samsung models. Like a lightswitch they locked in on a specific design.
Hell, the more curmudgeon-y will complain that phones have degraded since. Gone is the 3.5mm jack, gone is the SD card slot. "Fuck you, buy our expensive bluetooth junk." "Fuck you buy our cloud storage".
(The reality is that consumers appear to prefer bluetooth audio and cloud storage, phones that do still retain the 3.5mm/sd card slot aren't gaining ground in the market. Sony is likely to close down their phone division in the upcoming years despite being one of the last holdouts.)
Hence all the desire in tech to find "The next iPhone", and the dozens of attempts to make "AI hardware" despite the fact that literally all of it has failed against the simple question of "why can't this be a smartphone/smartwatch app?"
This extends to AI in general. It can't just be a tool with some specific applications, it has to "Change The World", "Be the next iPhone".