If your car failed to start, let's say, 8% of the time, you'd be looking at your state's lemon laws and demanding your manufacturer fix it. (I suppose it might be province's, prefecture's, oblast's, etc., but for Yanks like me, it'd be "state's".) Why major information providers and software authors have chosen to hop on the AI bandwagon, sometimes I don't know.
Don't get me wrong, these AI services are actually quite useful in certain contexts. For example, after doing a search engine search for something, and getting far too many irrelevant results, even after tweaking the search query, it's a fair bet that Gemini, Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, Rufus, Leo, etc. can cut through the noise and produce useful results. And it's also quite useful that they're conversational, in that they remember previous prompts, and all one needs to do is reference them, if only indirectly, to refine the answers. But sometimes, you have to wonder why companies have bothered at all, and they're quite useless. I have two instances I'd like to relate.
The first is pitting Siri against Google. I was driving around in unfamiliar territory, in the city next to my hometown. I was employed at the time by a company whose standards were 1.) that all their IT staff carry a cell phone (so that they can be, minimum, consulted any time, day or night...i.e., be on call), and 2.) that it be Apple (due to their track record of lack of security bugs/compromises). No worries, they bought the handset and paid for the service directly (instead of previous companies, which would have you do that and submit expense reports). I tried, hey, Siri...tell me about such-and-such (it was a while ago, I can't remember exactly what the query was about). It gave me irrelevant after irrelevant answer, even after trying to refine my question. Finally, I set up the Android tablet I had with me to be tethered to the iPhone, and asked, hey, Google. It had far more relevant results. Yay, Alphabet. I wondered why people liked Siri so much considering its popularity. I find it to be more frustration than anything else.
The second happened yesterday. I was in a certain multinational discount department store whose theme is blue, their logo is six yellow rays coming out of a central spot, seeming like the Sun, on a blue background ;-), and their workers wear blue vests. In fact, they have an (Android) app, which I wanted to find clothes hangers. I have used the app before; often if you ask for something, it will at least give you an idea of where to look by pointing out some product's aisle designation (ultimately turned out to be H30 in this case) given that the store you were in was selected.
But such is their zeal to sell you SOMETHING that they'll include mostly irrelevant search results. For starters, they quite understandably have, like many retailers with apps and Web sites, ship to store, pickup, and order for delivery. I am pretty sure I had selected the correct store location and pickup. The results showed me hangers that I guess they sell somehow, but (of course, why not?) would show not available for pickup. I'm going to guess the ones listed first have the highest GPM, to encourage you to buy them and therefore earn the most money from the sale. Okay, scroll, scroll, scroll, tap on a few of the results, still no aisle designations on any of them. I just need to get in the vicinity of any of these products, I'm sure they're not going to scatter hangers all over the store. Indeed, a lot of the product pages will show you they're in aisle such-and-such. Finding that designator is another story altogether, like, where are the G aisles, where are the H aisles, and so forth.
What's this? They have an AI assistant? Great. Let's give that a whirl, maybe it'll be like getting too many search engine results, it'll be helpful. Where would I find these? Well, you'll find them in closets, and in hotel rooms, and...(on and on about general, non-helpful things). No, no...where are these within the store (paraphrasing)? Typically they'll be found in the housewares. Well, duh, I know you don't know this, but I am standing somewhere in housewares. What is the aisle designation where I can find this product? Typically, they'd be in with housewares. Grumble. I had to go find an employee and ask them. Even they were at first less than helpful by pointing and saying down that way. Do you know the aisle designation? Nope. We ended up walking there together, where I said to her, ah, yes, thank you, H30, noting the sign for the aisle.
Hey, discount department store IT guys and gals, or their subcontractors: I don't need "typically," I need specific information. And why the F do you not have easily found aisle designations on each and every product...like right near the top of the description? Or, if it happens to be a not-in-person, only-online product, how about something like "Aisle: (online only)"? Why, oh why, was it considerably easier to find and to ask an employee instead of using your mostly worthless app?
I am also looking at you, Rochester, NY-based popular supermarket chain whose logo is a stylized W and also has an Android app. You tell me a certain cheese product is "in dairy". Have you looked at the size of your dairy section? Don't you think I might have been through your dairy section if I'm looking for cheese? It's kind of like telling people how to get to your store by telling them it's in Depew. Okay, that's not about AI failure, but still, it's a similar sort of app and organization failure.
If I recall correctly, it was Andrew S. Tanenbaum who wrote in his seminal OS design book with regard to input buffers for typing, those who did not program them into their OS ought to be forced to use exclusively their own system. Both the supermarket and discount department store IT guys and gals ought to be, on a regular and frequent basis, forced to find something in their respective stores with only their company's app.
English is a difficult enough language to interpret correctly when its rules are followed, let alone when the speaker or writer chooses not to follow those rules.
"Jeopardy!" replies and randomcaps really suck!