• bbboi@feddit.uk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    7
    ·
    edit-2
    20 hours ago

    A consumer is just the opposite side of the same coin. Corporations exist because of customers and customers exist because of corporations.

    a person who uses up a commodity; a purchaser of goods or services, a customer

    Companies are always chasing stupid ideas. The AI fridge is the Twitter fridge of this decade, a stupid idea some business person was genius. We’ve always been this dumb.

    • Lfrith@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      15 hours ago

      Inclusion of AI isn’t meant to be a selling point to product buying customers but to convince retail investors who throw money at anything with AI into buying up shares of stock.

      And some companies like NVIDIA and micron have reached a point where retail customer revenue is a rounding error compared to direct corporate sales, so there’s no need to cater them and for some no need to even sell to retail customers anymore.

      As things get more expensive it helps create a rental economy, so people having to rent leads to companies able to make money selling to companies that are making money providing subscription services to consumers who have been priced out.

      Kind of like the housing market in a way.

      • PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        11 hours ago

        Exactly right.

        As such, any bleating about markets being driven by “consumer choice” is either hopelessly out of date / embarrassingly naive - or malicious.

        Just as consumer sales are a rounding error, so is consumer choice - it’s a direct relationship.

        This extends a lot farther than the AI bubble, we have allowed corporations to merge and monopolize, and “investors” to gamble on it all, to where they completely invert the relationship.

        They shape our experience by constraining choice, dictating only options with profit margins and heinous licensing terms that work exclusively and overwhelmingly in their favor.