A R7 000 toothbrush is peak AI mania
IT’S time again for a reality check: companies have lost their minds over artificial intelligence and other fancy technology that probably won’t improve your life.
Businesses large and small are racing to show off to their employees, shareholders and you that they are all-in on new magical AI. I’ve seen a lot of tech frenzies come and go, but AI mania is truly out of control.
AI will have profoundly helpful uses. But the technology is also drowning in false promises that suck your time, energy, money and possibly your well-being. (Example: New York has an official AI chatbot that habitually gives people wrong legal advice.)
This moment in technology demands more.
Why does all this supposedly AI technology exist? Why is it worth your time or money? Why is a task proposed for AI – say, asking a chatbot for the proper oven temperature at a fast-food restaurant – any better than simpler, cheaper, less privacy-invading ways of doing the same thing?
Flashy technology demands your attention like a loud red sports car. You probably wouldn’t shop at a grocery store because it has amazing inventory management software. But maybe you would if it has robots or cashier-less checkouts.
Companies can, of course, take cool-sounding technology to a ridiculous extreme. May I present: Oral-B’s line of toothbrushes with AI.
Marketing materials for the $400 (more than R7 400) version mention “AI Position Detection” – which sounds like a straightforward sensor to detect which teeth you’re brushing and for how long. There’s also “3D teeth tracking with AI” to show whether you’ve brushed successfully.
I asked representatives of Procter & Gamble, which owns Oral-B, what exactly is AI about this toothbrush. They declined to comment. If you’re jazzed about nightly grades for your brushing, you do you. But this toothbrush doesn’t seem to have AI even under the squishiest definition of that term.
Marc Benioff, CEO of software company Salesforce and a big AI booster, recently tweeted that the toothbrush was a sign of peak AI hype. (Sorry to Benioff and the rest of us, there will be way more AI hype.)
We will get past the mania of companies shoving mediocre or pretend AI into every product and telling you it’s glorious. It just doesn’t feel that way right now.
So here’s your sanity check for AI hype: ask a lot of whys, and please ignore 95% of what’s happening. |