My wife’s job is to do data analysis for a truck fleet maintenance company. She gathers statistics about repair location performance, truck age, that sort of stuff. She reports these distilled results to customers, to inform them about the work being done and any trends they need to investigate. It’s all pretty straightforward and they use a software package to collate the data and chart it. It works well.

As you would expect, one of their biggest customers has demanded that they “use AI” to give them better “insights” and “optimize what they are spending”. How should they “use AI”, you may ask? No idea, just do it. Naturally, the software package she uses has a shitty “AI agent” bolted onto it in the last few months, but it’s utter garbage and does a worse job.

No matter. She has been tasked to “use AI” and the customer isn’t happy that it hasn’t happened yet. It’s clear that this customer had their CEO/CTO/whatever decree that everybody “use AI” in their work to “improve outcomes”.

She’s really stressed about this and doesn’t know what to do. I told her to say she “optimized the algorithm for data collection and reporting”; after all, “AI” such a nebulous term that normal computer processes can technically be called that. Maybe claim that she used the shitty software package’s “AI agent” and not reveal that it’s garbage and was discarded. This will tickle their balls until all this bullshit goes away. That day can’t come soon enough.