At least applications built upon the “we call the OpenAI api” product strategy are less scammy than Web3 felt.

I think scam is perhaps not quite right. I see AI as the evolution beyond social media algorithms. Now it will feel even more human resulting in the manipulation being even more subtle and effective over time. Being more human like may also help people feel like sharing more information with it. Some may even think it is their friend. I think there is a lot more psychology in play with AI whereas Web3 mostly plays on ones greed and facilitates wash trading and faux investments into unregistered unlicensed securities. So for AI I believe a better description could be manipulation framework.

Comparing web3 scams to this new wave of AI is unironically ignorant and delusional.

For one small example I literally get daily value from Copilot and happily pay for it, and there is much more beyond this. I've never once gotten meaningful value from web3.