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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 29, 2025

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I think the models is less that those chatbots will be the face of the profit making for AI companies. Not true, I think the people using the bots now are unpaid trainers, not the future end users. Every issue that comes up now can be fixed once the bot gets a correction from the freeware users. But that’s not a very useful user base anyway. The best use case for such bots is actually business to business. Maybe Walmart wants to use it with its app to help customers find a product that fixes a problem they have, or can tell you where something is. They’d probably want to buy a license for incorporation of the bot into their app. Maybe Apple wants to replace their social media team with Open AI based solutions. Or the CEO of Tesla wants to use AI to suggest improvements to their car line. In those cases, getting a good useful bot would get them an effective and efficient solution probably worth a good deal of money to them (if for no other reason than it reduces headcount), and they will pay for it.

I just encountered a business whose product is "AI renter harassment". Imagine a chatbot that pretends to be a person, and annoys your renters with frequent reminders that the rent is due, and then keeps hassling them for up to three months after move out!

Can't wait for the counter-offer, "AI creditor deflection".

Let the arms race begin…