Post AI World- Rant Clark Reid Tech Report Commentary

A subscriber commented that I do a lot about AI and much is— or seems repetitive. I replied to him…’no kidding’  I have touched on this here, but will elaborate a bit more now. My son in IT and I have had many conversations about AI. Both of us think it is an enormously hyped bubble. 

I have read a number of other folks who report on AI who think the same. There is a serious dot com bubble vibe to all this. Billions…maybe into the trillions…have been pumped into generative AI, and so far the returns have been puny. This may be the year…or maybe next year…that the big money people decide to pull the plug. We just reported a few days ago how some large PC makers are really disappointed about sales of AI capable PCs. The public just doesn’t see all that much value in it.

Can it be useful? Certainly. I have a granddaughter that is halfway through engineering school who uses it. She built a resume with ChatGPT, then had it do mock interviews with her. She got a good summer internship that will probably lead to a good job when she graduates. Her Mom uses it in her work a bit, but it’s just a tool that can do some things more quickly so far. Those are good uses, indeed. Some lawyers are finding it useful in drafting pleadings quickly. Most use Anthropic’s Claude. A few early on found out the hard way that the generative AI sometimes makes up cases or statutes, so even if it drafts a petition or response in 2 to 5 minutes…you will need to spend an hour or two double-checking the citations. It still saves a ton of time in this case. Now, Lexis has introduced an AI product for attorneys…I just got a snipe ad from them.

Super intelligence? One of the creators of Large Language Models left OpenAI to start his own startup. He has been joined by Jeff Bezos as Co-CEO. We reported on this here recently. He said upon leaving that generative AI is a dead end and he is going to try to figure out another way to get to super intelligence. The head of Meta’s AI has just left, too…and he also said AI isn’t going to become super intelligent and is a dead end. 

So the net is, in my view, generative AI will be a good tool and can be a time saver for people…but as for it being embedded in robots that will displace millions of jobs…nope. It isn’t going to have that capability, no matter how much Big Tech tries to will it to do so. Perhaps the next big thing will do those things…time will tell. Meanwhile, citizens, workers, bosses, and politicians had better be figuring out a way to pay a good living to all the people in the country after the next big thing and robotics displace much of the workforce. The folks in power love having more money and power, and are fine with regular people having next to nothing…BUT…a number of them understand that they don’t want to be on the receiving end of modern day mobs with pitchforks and torches coming for them. The time is now to figure out how to make this work. Even Elon Musk…who is no genius, except at buying up companies that are going somewhere and convincing the masses that he is a rocket scientist…when actually he just employs them…understands that people can’t just be displaced. He has said that in the future, no one will have to worry about money to live on…but has offered no specifics. Again…time to get thinking about this, billionaires and politicians.

I’m Clark Reid, and you aren’t ‘Technified’ now, but perhaps stimulated to ponder our post AI and robotic inhabited world. 

RAM Prices Hit Phones-Apple Will Come Out Better; Meta AI Glasses Can Help You Hear; LG Forces Copilot on Smart TVs; Senators Probe AI Tech Giants over Electric Bills

We have talked about it here…hell, everyone has that covers tech. The AI boom is gobbling up RAM chips and the prices are through the roof, and there are shortages. Now, it is starting to hit consumer products like smartphones. Appleinsider.com reports that The revised forecast expects global smartphone shipments to fall about 2% year over year, reversing earlier expectations for modest growth. Memory costs are the primary driver, with Counterpoint Research pointing to supply tightness and aggressive pricing from memory vendors. That said, Apple’s iPhone is in pretty good shape to weather the shortage and price bump better than their competitors. For one thing, Apple can absorb higher component costs more effectively than other makers, while preserving margins. Expect many of the Android phone makers to have to hike prices, or cut specs…or even cut back their product lines a bit. Budget phones…the ones that sell for under $200…have already seen prices jump 20-30% since early 2025. Mid-range phones are up in prices in the teens. The high-end flagships have seen much smaller, but still notable jumps in price. Of the Android phones, Samsung should be better off than most in holding the price line. Like Apple, they have long term supply deals on pricing. Even so, both Samsung and Apple will see a small drop in sales this year. 

Meta has released an update to its AI that lets you hear people better in a noisy environments. According to techcrunch.com, the feature will initially be available on Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta HSTN smart glasses in the US and Canada. Besides the improved hearing in a noisy environment, the update can play you a song by an artist if you are looking at an album cover by them. You can also get Christmas music if you are looking at your Christmas tree. Ho, ho, ho…can you say feature only useful for a few weeks a year? Ok, a bit snarky here. Actually, the clearer hearing of a conversation with someone in a noisy environment will be pretty useful if it really works. So far, the AI that is supposed to do this in hearing aids really doesn’t do any better than without the AI…but we’ll see how Meta’s update works out. 

A fair number of people really don’t like Microsoft Copilot on their computers. If you are one of those, you may want to steer clear of LG smart TVs. Mashable.com notes that LG is baking Copilot into their smart TVs, and it can NOT be deleted. You can hide it from the home screen, but it is still there, lurking in the background. The un-deletable Copilot was first mentioned on Reddit, at r/mildlyinfuriating. So far, the post has gotten some 36,000 upvotes and thousands of comments…most from people irritated at the unremovable Copilot. The problem is…what can an AI assistant app really do for you on your TV that you can’t do yourself better and faster? Apparently, most of the Redditors that have noticed the Copilot think ‘not much.’

A side effect of the great AI boom and all those data centers…besides causing a shortage of memory chips…is that it takes a huge amount of power to run all those server farms. Guess what? Electric bills are up. Now, geekwire.com reports three Democratic Senators have sent letters to Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta…and 3 data center firms. The senators are concerned about tech giants and their AI push raising residential electric bills. For its part, Amazon put out a white paper Tuesday saying that its data centers aren’t the problem, and that in some regions it actually pays more than required for energy use. The investigations come amid a general rise in household expenses, making the allocation of utility costs particularly contentious. Residential electricity costs nationwide are on the rise, according to federal data. Power bills rose more than 7% on average when comparing September rates to a year earlier. The senators are Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.