Remember that scene in The Big Short where they realised there was a bubble in the American real estate market...

[tommorris@mastodon.social]

Remember that scene in The Big Short where they realised there was a bubble in the American real estate market... yeah, I kinda feel like maybe "we've put AI in our pizza oven" should be a tip off that we're in a bubble.

And it's about as stupid as the time people decided monkey JPEG derivatives were the future of the financial sector.

https://www.theverge.com/news/768542/ooni-volt-2-pizza-oven-ai-pizza-intelligence

[froztbyte@mastodon.social]

@tommorris I have this incredible memory of, in 1999, seeing in a store a washing machine with a literal rotary timer switch control, being marked as "y2k safe"

I reflect on that thought often in the current mania of shoving prompts into every damned thing that don't need prompts (or any other kind of useless rebranded-ML algorithm)

"marketing and leadership DEMAND we find a use for AI" again and again and again

[lproven@social.vivaldi.net]

@froztbyte @tommorris While you're absolutely right, TBH, I'd like to see _more_ flagrantly low-tech electrical and electronics devices. Less sophistication, less wireless, more mechanical knobs and dials, please.

I am shopping for kitchens, gods have mercy upon me, and when I raise the notion of _accessibility_ in cooker hobs -- the current trend is blank glass squares with only touch controls, and my mum's nearly blind -- it blows their tiny minds.

With glasses, my eyesight is fine. But I do not wear glasses in the shower, for obvious reasons. The microscopic patches of blue and red used to communicate "hot" and "cold" are invisible to me without specs on.

Make this a legal requirement. All appliances must make allowance for visual, auditory and motor deficits, or you can't sell them. To anyone. Even keen-eyed youth.