Why is every company encorporating AI everywhere?

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• Hacker News
• Product owners were promised that LLMs/AI is a magical genie that can do anything, so they make it do everything. The trillions of dollars spent on data centers and thousands of layoffs has to be justified somehow.
  by theandrewbailey
• There are most likely many different reasons. Cutting costs is a big one; leveraging new functionality in a simpler way is another one. For instance, yesterday I watched some youtube videos and one use case was "count to 100 in a very sad voice", even if that is more a joke and ... pretty useless on its own. The AI did.

  What was interesting to me here was that if I were to write a program to do the same, I could most likely do that (just simplify the tasks as they are and implement each one), but it would take me longer. As much as I hate AI, there are real benefits in at the least some areas.

  by shevy-java
• If the AI is deeply integrated and feature-rich, I would prefer it. However, if it is just a disconnected chat interface, I don't think it is necessary. Additionally, whether it requires an extra fee is a factor that must be considered.
  by zs1m
• I think for a good share of products it isn't necessary, but I also guess that it's very hard to see from the start. I strongly believe there generally is value in AI, but finding this particular application that unlocks it -- is a conundrum. So, if I imagine myself being a head/vp of product, in one of these companies, I have pretty much no choice but to integrate it and study the metrics. Then, after a few iterations the value is either found or not, and depending on the sanity of stakeholders, the useless AI features can be retired. But not before the evidence is collected, because you can't fight the AI frenzy without ones, lol
  by lonelondonpanda
• I consult on the topic of technology for non-technology companies (think like a hydraulic piston manufacturer or something. They consume software in order to create something else.)

  Basically if the technical leaders at such companies fail to shoehorn AI in somewhere, they will have to find a way to demonstrate to their board of directors that they are keeping up to date and not allowing the business to settle in to abandonware. The guys selling the software also have a similar problem -- industrial abandonware whose development team was laid off 12 years ago is for sale right now and you have to be careful not to accidentally spend a million dollars on it. Something that has AI bolted on, even in an insignificant capacity, is more likely to have present day relevance.

  by jabroni_salad
• There's a lot to your point. Tech companies with barely functioning enterprise software products (or worse, companies that can acquire other companies and their enterprise products) can burn the bridge to the past by de-investing in legacy maintenance (laying off staff and expertise, cutting support), and forcing the existing user base to accept AI-fueled reboots. Buyers are sent back to market and the choice is between Behemoth Who's All in on AI's Latest VaporWareAI or Legacy Software that Works But Is a Sitting Duck.

  It's an industry-wide excuse/opportunity to force what was a stagnant commodity enterprise software market back into a new buying cycle with enough face-saving modernization chrome that buyers can make spending justifications.

  At best, this will be a de-evolutionary enshittification local minima era followed by a slow rebuild. More likely, the enshittification era will collapse under its own hyperinflated weight when the logrolling bubble pops, and there will be a consolidation of incremental gains, with a few new benefits being added to what would otherwise look on a long term scale as typical linear innovation if it were not for the hype bubble.

  by firebones
• > Why is every company encorporating AI everywhere?

  To find ways to cut costs and, ideally, make more revenue. It's that simple.

  by gaws
• Having attended startup school this weekend, we were told how, in the past, companies were reluctant to try new technology from startups, AI products, etc., because they were unvalidated and unsure of how they would work. Now, companies are more worried that they're going to be left behind and that their competitors will beat them if they do not adopt these new technologies.
  by preston-kwei
• It boils down to this: Nobody is willing to bet against AI right now.

  If you're an investor, you're probably managing other people's money. Would you want to explain to your customers if & when you were wrong, why you didn't go all in on AI? This is the most transformative technology humanity has ever conceived and we've been making sci fi movies about for decades, and didn't put all our money into it?

  So now that investor money is too scared to go anywhere else, that means if you're a CEO who cares about your share price, and who has to front up to the board every few weeks and defend your strategy lest they fire you, you must care about AI too. We aren't just a stiff old database anymore, noooo sir, we are the context layer for agents.

  So now, if you're the CTO, are you going to tell the CEO that AI has no use case here? Not if you care about your job. Repeat, all the way down to the bottom.

  There will be an emperor has no clothes moment. It might not be as dramatic as everyone is hoping, and it doesn't mean AI isn't world changing and is not here to stay, but the survival-induced psychosis at every level of the corporate world is absolutely unsustainable.

  by mindwok
• The thing is it doesn’t even matter if you are wrong because everyone is doing the same thing

  No one will blame you for going all in on AI

  by ex-aws-dude
• As someone who has experience building a small AI powered company and making these decisions on a small scale, I can say maybe?

  For some companies, automation that is based on being able to pull info from a gigantic knowledge base that still has bounds is helpful for them. Most orgs are still figuring this out in the face of immense pressure from their stakeholders not to fall behind and miss any potential windfall. They don’t know how LLMs can help them but the hype may push them in the black or lead to (false) growth so they lean in.

  I think many of the larger tech companies were hoping to make human engineers obsolete so that they could achieve the true promise of SaaS - almost no investment, instant money faucet. Unfortunately for them, we still need people to help us understand people so engineers, designers, and product managers aren’t as expendable as some of them were hoping.

  No one thought AI would be free or cheap, but a LOT of ppl bet that the true cost could be obfuscated or waved away temporarily while the money was stupid and then revealed once enterprise was addicted and struggled to manage their switching costs. By then the smartest folks have made their money, moved it to safer havens, and await the next stage of the lifecycle.

  I love LLMs but the way we use them seems very stupid, IMHO. It’s like everything is a screw now but everyone still has bolts and nails.

  by pmpmpmpm
• Someone I know said it's because investors get excited to know your product has AI.
  by chistev
• That was a relief. I thought users want it. I can understand investors being dumbfucks in grasping actual customer needs or to be completely ignorant about it.
  by wseqyrku
• :-) I have had my share of bad meetings over this, I have always advocated to start with enhancing existing features of product that would benefit from AI. But the org mandate is compulsory one idea for each product and new products should be agentic or RAG based only. I don't understand this rush to incorporate AI, I feel shit must be organic and self paced, forced adoptions wont last long.
  by pradeep2585
• Because VC money depends on the company’s growth plans, and VC money isn’t offered if “AI” isn’t part of the product any more. (Sample size of one, told by a friend who’s in direct contact with the CEO.)
  by Diti
• And also I suspect most companies work with big consultants like Bain and McKinsey because they (the companies) are scared and clueless and have no vision about how to run their businesses, which is perfect for them (the big consultants) to extract value from them with smoke up their holes and predictions about a future no one has ever seen yet.
  by Dependance