The cost of AI
The current trend to add AI to everything is driving up the cost.
There is a rush at the moment to add AI to everything with a fear that if you don't then you will be left behind.
It was refreshing to read this article by the team at iaWriter explaining why they would not be joining the rush to add AI features to their application. They argue that this move to incorporate AI removes a lot of the uniqueness of products and runs the risk of becoming just a feature in a future release of ChatGPT. It also ties the application to a single provider, which in a large number of cases is not a good outcome.
It is not about adding AI just for the sake of it or because everyone else is. It is about identifying the "why" behind adding it - what does it actually add?
We experienced another example of the impact of AI on businesses. We were happily using an automated QA tool and then they decided to add "AI features". Some of the features were great however there was no optionality to this. If you wanted to continue using the tool then you had to include and pay for the AI features.
Using AI currently does not come cheap and so these new AI features are expensive to support and need to be paid for.
This means that the customer has to pay.
The outcome of this was that they had to increase the fee they charged their customers. What was previously a yearly fee has now become a monthly fee - a 12x increase just to support the new AI features. This means that instead of continuing with a tool we liked and were willing to pay for we are looking elsewhere as the new AI features are not enough for us to justify paying the additional costs.
I wonder how many businesses will find that adding these new AI features will not be the golden future they are looking for and will in fact have the opposite effect?
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