Artificial Wardrobe Advice

Remember when AI was being heralded as the greatest thing since sliced bread?  How it was going to change the world, revolutionise the way we did, well, everything?  Yet here we are, down the road a bit, and the practical applications of this technology are still thin on the ground.  Most depressingly, one web giant is reduced to trying to sell AI to the public on the basis that it can tell you how to make cookies or what clothes to wear before you go out.  I'm sure you've seen all those ads for, I think, Google Gemini, the most pathetic being the one where it is used to give wardrobe advice to a user, even down to whether they should put a matching hat on their dog.  I mean, really, is this what billions of dollars have been spent for, what vast amounts of energy and resources are being expended on?  Wardrobe advice?  For dogs?  I don't which is worse, the idea that this is an appropriate use for this technology, or that its developers think that people really are incapable of making decisions on what clothes to wear without AI assistance.  I mean, if I'm in a quandary as to what to wear before venturing out of my house, I just look out of the window: if it is raining I know that I need a raincoat, if it is cold, I might want a scarf, if it is sunny, then lightweight clothing would be appropriate.  See, it's easy, you don't need an AI assistant for that.  Just like you shouldn't need it for doing your school work, baking cookies, medical advice or, indeed, virtually any other everyday task.

Now, I'm not going to be a hypocrite here and pretend that I never use AI.  But at least I confine myself to utilising it for stuff that lies outside of my expertise and ability.  Namely, the production of images used mainly over on The Sleaze.  Ok, it is still a trivial pretext for burning up valuable resources, but hey, it is at least pretty harmless.  Moreover, when I interact with things like ChatGPT, I always treat them purely as utilities, tools to get a specific job done.  I keep my requests short and concise.  Curt, even.  After all, they are just a bunch of code, they aren't alive, they aren't sentient, they don't experience emotions, they don't get upset if you don't say 'please' and 'thank you'.  Yet there are many users out there who seem to treat them as if they human as if, even, they are somehow their 'friends'.  It is something I just don't understand, talking to machines as if they are human and therefore capable of giving a genuine response based upon empathy and emotion.  

Sure, I talk to some animals, particularly the local cat population and the swans over at the local pond, as if they human, but they, at least, are living beings, capable of expressing emotions, even empathy.  Indeed, while I'm under no illusions that they understand me in literal terms, they do understand my tone and therefore my intent and respond in like fashion, (I've built up a surprisingly good relationship with those swans, mainly based upon the fact that I feed them, but also because of the way I approach and interact with them, they accept me as entirely non-threatening and therefore have no fear of me, accepting my friendly intent).  The point is that machines and codes will never be able to give you such responses, yet there are people who vainly persist in deluding themselves that they do.  Which is why I won't waste time trying to make friends with them.  Besides, my limited experiences with AI have taught me that it is actually pretty stupid, in creative terms, at least, frequently incapable of grasping exactly what it is that you are requesting it to do, regardless of how literal your instructions are.  Perhaps it will improve with time.  These are, after all, early days.  But with the amount of money and resources it has taken to get it to the stage where it can advise you on what hat your dog should wear, one has to question how many more it will take to get AI to a stage where it is actually useful and capable of properly comprehending what it is being asked to do and, indeed, whether it is worth it.