As expected, the Superbowl ads were heavily focused on ‘AI.’ What struck me is the level of desperation they had. One ad attempted to leverage the supposed cultural cachet that Sam Altman and Elon Musk have, which is… interesting. The Chris Helmsworth ad was about how ‘AI’ will screw up and kill you, albeit in humorous ways–which is a strategy you don’t adopt if you actually have useful reasons to use AI products.

The one ad that demonstrated actual utility was a Ring propaganda ad where Ring was used to search for lost dogs. Sounds good until one realizes that it also could be used to search for people. But it’s not like federal agents would find you, and then illegally shoot you in the back ten times. The one real use case for AI is to expand the surveillance state, and they told us this on national television (needless to say, this convinced me to never, ever buy Ring).

I’m sure this will all be fine.