Comment on 'Worst in Show' CES products include AI refrigerators, AI companions and AI doorbells
Lfrith@lemmy.ca 2 weeks agoInclusion of AI isn’t meant to be a selling point to product buying customers but to convince retail investors who throw money at anything with AI into buying up shares of stock.
And some companies like NVIDIA and micron have reached a point where retail customer revenue is a rounding error compared to direct corporate sales, so there’s no need to cater them and for some no need to even sell to retail customers anymore.
As things get more expensive it helps create a rental economy, so people having to rent leads to companies able to make money selling to companies that are making money providing subscription services to consumers who have been priced out.
Kind of like the housing market in a way.
PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Exactly right.
As such, any bleating about markets being driven by “consumer choice” is either hopelessly out of date / embarrassingly naive - or malicious.
Just as consumer sales are a rounding error, so is consumer choice - it’s a direct relationship.
This extends a lot farther than the AI bubble, we have allowed corporations to merge and monopolize, and “investors” to gamble on it all, to where they completely invert the relationship.
They shape our experience by constraining choice, dictating only options with profit margins and heinous licensing terms that work exclusively and overwhelmingly in their favor.