True story time. I was talking to a guy at $dayjob and he says he’s been talking with a third party company, whose solution we might buy. I asked him how the talks with them went and he said they were negotiating and I asked him how that was going.
He offhandedly said that he asked if and how they were using AI at all in their solution. I asked “Why did you ask about AI?”, since I was sort of curious what benefit he was looking for.
He said “Well, it’s not that I actually care about AI in their product, but if they don’t have any AI stuff, I can use that as leverage when negotiating the contract for a lower price.”
I was a bit astonished and he did kinda knowingly smile. He said “yea I know, I am part of the problem”. He also said “it’s also about taking a temperature on how ahead in technology the company is”.
I just wanted to share cause this is so insidious. Companies are asking each other about AI, despite the fact that (at least sometimes) nobody actually wants it! They are asking in order to use the lack of AI as leverage, which incentivizes companies to include AI in their offerings, not because it’s actually useful, but because it gives them leverage to raise prices!
This really makes AI seem more and more like a bubble.
Oh wow, thanks for sharing. And buzzwords and this kind of marketing have a long tradition. I’d like to mention that generally it can be quite problematic if people are looking for the cheapest option and then they don’t really look at the features they need and if a solution aligns with the own business, but they look at some buzzwords instead. I mean you’ll end up with a HD-ready, AI enabled, Industry 5.0 and Web3.0 mobile-first process management solution that way. But probably the one from the shadiest company. I don’t think the suppliers are stupid. It mainly incentivises them to slap stickers on top and deceive their customers. Or sell a product which doesn’t fit.