{"id":96441,"date":"2025-07-07T05:00:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T09:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=96441"},"modified":"2025-07-06T20:54:37","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T00:54:37","slug":"consumers-dont-want-ai-in-everything-but-youll-be-forced-to-take-your-ai-peasants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2025\/07\/07\/consumers-dont-want-ai-in-everything-but-youll-be-forced-to-take-your-ai-peasants\/","title":{"rendered":"Consumers don’t want AI in everything, but you’ll be forced<\/em> to take your AI, peasants!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ted Gioia<\/a> — like about 92% of consumers at last count — doesn’t want to have artificial intelligence “enhancing” the software he uses every day, but software companies don’t want him — or you<\/em><\/strong> — to have that choice:<\/p>\n

A few months ago, I needed to send an email. But when I opened Microsoft Outlook, something had changed.<\/p>\n

Microsoft asked me to use Copilot to write my email. Copilot is my AI companion<\/em>. (That’s the cute word they use.) <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Hey I don’t want a companion<\/em> \u2014 especially not a fake AI buddy. I never asked for this.<\/p>\n

And what about the people receiving my emails? They don’t want this either. They want to hear from me, not a bot.<\/p>\n

How do I turn my companion<\/em> off?<\/p>\n

After some trial-and-error, I found a way to disable Copilot. Phew!<\/p>\n

But a few days later, Microsoft surprised me again. It wouldn’t let me save an Excel file until I had agreed to new terms for my software account.<\/p>\n

Guess what? AI is now bundled into all<\/em> of my Microsoft software.<\/p>\n

Even worse, Microsoft recently raised the price of its subscriptions by $3 per month<\/a> to cover the additional AI benefits. I get to use my AI companion 60 times per month as part of the deal.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Source<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

But I don’t want to use it. I want to kill<\/em> it.<\/p>\n

As you can see, I’ve never used this service. I still have all 60 credits unused. But I’m paying for it \u2014 because it’s now embedded into Microsoft Word, Excel, etc. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is how AI gets introduced to the marketplace \u2014 by force-feeding the public. And they’re doing this for a very good reason.<\/p>\n

Most people won’t pay for AI voluntarily \u2014 just 8% according to a recent survey<\/a>. So they need to bundle it with some other essential product.<\/p>\n

You never get to decide.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Source<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

Before proceeding let me ask a simple question: Has there ever been a major innovation that helped society, but only 8% of the public would pay for it?<\/p>\n

That’s never happened before in human history. Everybody wanted electricity in their homes. Everybody wanted a radio. Everybody wanted a phone. Everybody wanted a refrigerator. Everybody wanted a TV set. Everybody wanted the Internet.<\/p>\n

They wanted it. They paid for it. They enjoyed it.<\/p>\n

AI isn’t like that. People distrust it or even hate it \u2014 and more so with each passing month. So the purveyors must bundle it into current offerings, and force usage that way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ted Gioia — like about 92% of consumers at last count — doesn’t want to have artificial intelligence “enhancing” the software he uses every day, but software companies don’t want him — or you — to have that choice: A few months ago, I needed to send an email. But when I opened Microsoft Outlook, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,28,15],"tags":[1506,1563,94,92],"class_list":["post-96441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-media","category-technology","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-enshittification","tag-microsoft","tag-software"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-p5v","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96441"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96447,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96441\/revisions\/96447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}