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Comment by acureau | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand how anyone is shocked by businesses trying to integrate "the next big thing" into their offerings. Objectively, there are new things we can do with the recent advancements in AI. Experimentation is natural, even if those in charge are not intimately familiar with the technology. Some experiments will be useful and some less so.

How does seeing "generate image" on WordPress make you fume? Why would they implement the option to disable it? It's a perfectly sound idea. Instead of finding some stock image to use, allow users to generate one without leaving the platform. Regardless of any qualms with the technology itself and its implications, it now exists as a commercial offering. Businesses are going to try and use it to improve user experience and make more money.

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There's a difference between identifying areas where a new technology (AI) can solve a problem in a better way, and just slapping "Now with AI!" on an existing product purely to chase investor dollars.

> I don't understand how anyone is shocked by businesses

I think its that normally biz leaders manage to seem reasonable (maybe they aren't), so they seem like level headed "we will explore this option" type of people. Often they don't really understand it because they have MBAs not degrees in fields.

Most people who work there would tell you the primary value they have at the company is that they hold the purse strings. Nothing else.

But now, possibly because they took a prompt from some AI, they exuberantly shout about how they "love AI" and you get that bad feeling when you see someone and you know they were taken in by a snake-oil salesman selling a pyramid scheme...

So the facade has dropped and everyone's just like "oh wow, I guess <level-headed company> is run by idiots"...

> How does seeing "generate image" on WordPress make you fume?

HN crowd is increasingly threatened by new technology.

That’s possible, but it also seems likely that the HN crowd is used to existing in a space where a tiny fraction of good ideas succeed. Figuring that out requires an appropriately tuned sense of technology and the market, for which it is objectively reasonable to be skeptical of new things, especially when in a high point of the hype cycle. It’s also important to stay optimistic though…

> HN crowd is increasingly threatened by new technology.

Just because HN became bigger. But hackers are used to this, creating the new technology.

Presumably there’s a middle ground between arguing for experimenting with new tech and somewhat disingenuously arguing that it’s the core of your business. The manner of delivery and applicability of the tech to a company’s products impact the credibility of the claim that AI is important to a business’s future.

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