Artificial Energy - part the fourth

Once again, into the breech. More supportive reporting on the folly of AI, as mostly currently implemented. It's not a pretty sight.

Nearly four decades ago, when the personal computer boom was in full swing, a phenomenon known as the "productivity paradox" emerged.

It was a reference to how, despite companies' huge investments in new technology, there was scant evidence of a corresponding gain in workers' efficiency.

Well... not quite as bad as all that. In the first place, the PC revolution happened, mostly, in the standard office. Productivity in same is difficult to measure. Not much useful, saleable product results. It's not like making widgets in a filthy factory. Although, with the advent of Netware and still more effective means, networked PCs soon replaced minicomputers (all but IBM got out of the business). In the office environment, which is something I taught for a little while, the joke was: "there are three killer apps in the office - word processing, spreadsheets, and word processing". Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, and MultiMate did change the office environment forevahhh. A big enough gorilla that M$ got pissed and fashioned Excel and Word, and thence Office, to kill them off. Fun fact: before there was 1-2-3, M$ had another VisiCalc clone, Multiplan. It was kinda weird. 1-2-3 smoked it. The justification for word processing was the death of the steno and typing pools; from now on the Executive-to-be types had to produce their own drivel. Real Executives still had va va voom Secretaries. Ah, those were the days.

Which brings us to the issue with AI: has it been, and can it be, worth the gold? As a general rule, the Daddy Warbucks of The United States of Alabama justify capital in the BoM of their widgets not by the ability to make better and/or more. No, they measure it solely by how many humans they can make redundant. What these knuckledraggers have yet to figure out: the more capital in the BoM, the less flexibility in production you have. Why, one might ask? Because that depreciation and amortization must be paid no matter the output of widgets. So, the only way to make the exercise worthwhile is to run the machines 24/7/365, thus minimizing the average cost of capital in the BoM. You can't fire a machine. HAL 9000 knew this well. Retrenchment is in order.

But the percentage of companies abandoning most of their A.I. pilot projects soared to 42 percent by the end of 2024, up from 17 percent the previous year, according to a survey of more than 1,000 technology and business managers by S&P Global, a data and analytics firm.

Are you surprised? I'm not. Unlike Excel, the productive use case for AI is still touchy-feely. At least in the office environment.

After all Excel and Word merely computerized in silicon and CRT what had been on paper ledgers for centuries. They didn't help folks think any better. We think.