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Comment by have_faith | Hacker News Reader

I personally can't wait for brands to start specifically advertising "doesn't use AI" as a selling point because everyone got burned by their AI controlled toaster, literally and figuratively. For anything designated an "appliance" I want it to be fixable by someone locally, or it's just throwing money away.

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"AI" will create a new business model for sure: "Talk to a real person", "100% human made", etc. This would be the new counter-culture.

That's a new flavor of customer service jobs which will still suck and be paid terribly

At least you'll be able to complain to someone, hehe.

Unless that person is you... but in that case you would just complain to your coworkers so nothing really changes I guess

That’s the current culture. How many times have you heard “I want to speak with a real person” or “artisanal hand made”.

> For anything designated an "appliance" I want it to be fixable by someone locally

This is already pretty much gone thanks to manufacturers making it extremely difficult to fix things. No AI required.

It's not gone, but is much more expensive up front. For example, everyone I know has a range or stovetop/oven with a circuit board or two in it, few if any replaceable parts, etc... That's basically the standard if you're in the 30" range that costs $1-2k market. Meanwhile, my 60" Bluestar has no circuit board, it has four mechanical electronic switches for the oven lights and convection. Everything else is brass valves, standard easily replaceable parts and so on. A few weeks back a convection fan went out and I replaced it in 5 minutes with a screwdriver. But, this range starts at $18k.

So yes, I see a market for bespoke non-AI.

I'm curious if we will reach a situation were the steam punk idea becomes reality:

People plugging weird stuff together like a ai chip from a car into a toaster.

If ai becomes hardware chips it could easily be that language processing will be a chip default feature and the rest is teachable like plugin ai chip level 3 into it, boot it and teach it that it's now a toaster.

But at the end we will have the same toaster in 30 years as we have had for the last 30 years.

I'm sure that in 2045, the Hacker News of its time will be complaining about lack of AI-less devices the way it complains about lack of smart-less TVs. It'll be available, it'll be more expensive, and the people who claim they want it don't want it enough to pay the premium.

I'd rather pay for 'does not collect and sell your data. Does not play advertisements, is not remotely operable or accesible by anyone but the owner'

Sadly the market goes 100% full steam in the opposite direction.

Here’s where a toaster will be in the near future.

https://youtu.be/7folKbch3U8

Do we want this?

> For anything designated an "appliance" I want it to be fixable by someone locally, or it's just throwing money away.

What does this have to do with the price of tea in China, or AI for that matter? I agree we should have repairable appliances. I also want better AI.

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