Why do so many products that don’t seem to need AI integration still feel the need to include it?

The world didn’t ask for an AI-designed shoe. Nor did young parents across the country clamor for AI-enabled baby changing pads. It’s almost certain that your cat doesn’t know the difference between doing its business in a regular litter box versus one that is AI-enhanced. Yet all of these products exist, because the drumbeat of supposed progress in Silicon Valley is immutable. Super Bowl commercials were a prime example of AI’s societal stranglehold. OpenAI, Salesforce, and Google all aired commercials for their AI products during Sunday’s big game. How did we get here? We obviously didn’t start out with AI-powered teddy bears and a chatbot that specializes in erectile dysfunction. For the past couple of years, startups and tech giants alike have anchored themselves to AI hype because it’s been the easiest way to stay relevant or appear like the kind of mold-breaker that can turn the heads of almighty venture capitalists. After all, neither sovereign wealth funds nor institutional investors like stagnation. It’s been a trickle-down dynamic between AI’s influence on the tech world and consumer products in general. It started with OpenAI: Two years after initially getting bankrolled by Microsoft, the ChatGPT maker is closing a $40 billion investment from SoftBank, the Japanese investment titan. AI euphoria—or contagion—has swept Silicon Valley, and startups have the best chance of getting funding if they develop AI or otherwise integrate it into a product that’s apparently crying out for an overdue disruption—like the humble litter box. Last year, AI-related companies welcomed $100 billion in VC investment globally, which is roughly one-third of the $314 billion spent on all tech startups, a Crunchbase analysis shows. Undergirding all of this is a belief called “technological determinism,” Arun Sundararajan, a professor of technology, operations and statistics at New York University told Inc. last month. “If technology can do it, then it will happen,” Sundararajan explained. “As soon as the technological capability comes along, somehow, magically, it will enter our reality.” The latter half of that statement is undeniable. AI is being shoehorned into products that seemingly do not need to be enhanced by machine learning or large language models. Even in the summer of 2023, experts were warning that superfluous products riding the AI wave are eerily reminiscent of the firms that collapsed and caused market chaos in the dot-com crash. Last summer, Gayle Jennings-O’Byrne, CEO and general partner at VC firm Wocstar, said basically the same thing: “The mindset of VCs, versus the reality of what these business models and companies are going to look like, [is] just going to propel what we’re calling a bubble,” she told Inc. But inevitably, there will be more expansion, iteration, and pursuit of growth. Despite losing $5 billion last year, OpenAI is eyeing locations for new data centers in 16 different states, and Meta says it will allocate $65 billion for AI development this year. Even though ChatGPT has 200 million monthly users, it’s unclear to some experts whether the product adds anything of value to productivity and economic output. The worry is that consumer tools that can generate images and text on demand are more of a parlor trick than a new form of electricity. “We know ChatGPT has about 200 million unique monthly users, but the question is how many of them are using it in a way that will lead to significant productivity improvements/cost reductions. I don’t really know the answer to that question,” Daron Acemoglu, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology told NPR last October. BY SAM BLUM @SAMMBLUM