Anonymous wrote:It will send us back to the stone age - or at least the pre-internet age / early internet age - in the sense that people will increasingly refuse to buy "smart" products or engage with free online content.
If my smart refrigerator is going to advertise at me instead of helping me with my actual grocery planning, why even bother having that feature? I'll make a manual list like people always did.
If a search engine returns mostly SEO results and incorrect AI answers instead of the information I was looking for, why bother using it? There are alternative search engines and non-internet sources.
If any news video or recorded speech could be fake, then why engage with videos at all? Or if I do, it will be worth a few bucks to subscribe to a trusted source.
This...I wanted a wifi-enabled thermostat until I heard two stories.
1) It required an OTA update (this was pushed in the middle of the night). The thermostat didn't start back up (needed a person to restart it). So everyone woke up cold.
2) Vacation home. Owners went out for evening in winter to a neighbors house. It was just far enough outside the zone that the thermostat thought it should go into vacation mode. Owners arrived home to a cold house.
Those two stories were enough to get me to lose interest totally.
I also have no need for a wifi enabled dishwasher or refrigerator. These appliances do not need to communicate.