OK, right up front I’m willing to acknowledge that AI is going to be a thing. Probably a pretty big thing. But pretend along with me for a moment that it’s not going to be nearly as big a thing as the smartest-guys-in-the-room think it’s gonna be.

(I note that every time I open Facebook, an artifact from it being the only way I can keep up with nieces and nephews and such, I am hectored to sign up for Muse® and give it all my personal information including bank accounts and stock portfolio and who knows what else so it can take over my life and do everything for me ... Which is not gonna happen. Not ever. Not for a minute.)

But I am remembering how, just in the past couple decades there were so many things that were going to change everything. No, I don’t mean like the Segway or New Coke or other silly things, I mean stuff that everyone told me would change things forever like “the internet” did back in the 90’s and aughts. And if you were in the bookstore, record shop, newspaper, travel agency, Yellow Pages, or lots of others you would have been wise to heed.

But then I’ve come through the predictions of Blockchain! NFTs! Metaverse! Wearable Tech! Crypto! And more, and while all of them are “a thing”, none have changed my life in any meaningful way. (Actually I don’t think even NFTs are “a thing” at all.) The others may be worth billions, but they’re surely not worth the gazillions that the smart guys are pouring into data centers and AI bots that somehow must be paid for within a short time frame (loans, chips degrade, water runs out, etc).

I’m skeptical. Sure, there will be lots of good uses for AI. Maybe making AI slop won’t be one of them for too much longer, and if my feeds are an indication, that’s about half of it already.