Ask Slashdot: What's the Stupidest Use of AI You Saw In 2025?
- Reference: 0180472911
- News link: https://ask.slashdot.org/story/25/12/29/0738214/ask-slashdot-whats-the-stupidest-use-of-ai-you-saw-in-2025
- Source link:
> What's the stupidest use of AI you encountered in 2025? Have you been called by AI telemarketers? Forced to do job interviews with [2]a glitching AI ?
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> With all this talk of "disruption" and " [3]inevitability ," this is our chance to have some fun. Personally, I think 2025's worst AI "innovation" was [4]the AI-powered web browsers that eat web pages and then spit out a slop "summary" of what you would've seen if you'd actually visited the web page. But there've been other AI projects that were just exquisitely, quintessentially bad...
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> — Two years after the death of Suzanne Somers, her husband recreated her with [5]an AI-powered robot .
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> — Disneyland imagineers used deep reinforcement learning to program [6]a talking robot snowman .
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> — Attendees at LA Comic Con were offered that chance to to talk to an [7]AI-powered hologram of Stan Lee for [8]$20 .
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> — And of course, as the year ended, the Wall Street Journal [9]announced that a vending machine run by Anthropic's Claude AI had been [10]tricked into giving away hundreds of dollars in merchandise for free , including a PlayStation 5, a live fish, and underwear.
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> What did I miss? What "AI fails" will you remember most about 2025?
Share your own thoughts and observations in the comments.
What's the stupidest use of AI you saw In 2025?
[1] https://slashdot.org/~destinyland
[2] https://mashable.com/article/ai-job-interviewers-tiktok-viral
[3] https://slashdot.org/story/25/12/15/0812238/are-warnings-of-superintelligence-inevitability-masking-a-grab-for-power
[4] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/11/01/0514222/do-ai-browsers-exist-for-you---or-to-give-ai-companies-data
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=14&v=KPkNbrhE42U&feature=youtu.be
[6] https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/olaf-robotic-character/
[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7VIDy8rco0&t=36s
[8] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/stan-lee-ai-hologram-l-a-comic-con-1236375354/
[9] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/we-let-ai-run-our-office-vending-machine-it-lost-hundreds-of-dollars/ar-AA1SAlNa
[10] https://slashdot.org/story/25/12/18/1849218/anthropics-ai-lost-hundreds-of-dollars-running-a-vending-machine-after-being-talked-into-giving-everything-away
Re: (Score:1)
DupeDupeGPT
Re: (Score:2)
Any post? All stories are by the mods. If you consider them all stupid... WTF are you even here? Is someone *paying* you for this? If not, you outrank them all in terms of stupid.
As if youtube wasn't already lame... (Score:2)
now it's choked with AI generated content as well.
Driving up memory prices. (Score:5, Insightful)
The tripling of memory prices and watching the domino effect to any computer hardware that needs memory (but can't get adequate supplies) due to the hoovering up of nearly all the memory being produced by data centers used for AI projects.
That's the most stupid, and annoying thing about all this to me. May this bubble pop, and quickly.
Re:Driving up memory prices. (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, increasing my electricity prices by 20% just this year. I attribute it to AI data centers, and unfettered capitalism. Big Tech should have absorbed those costs, in my humble opinion.
Re:Driving up memory prices. (Score:4, Informative)
Clearly you don't understand supply and demand.
To start with...no one is producing consumer ram. No one. Everyone is focusing solely on high-end memory.
They have already stated they have zero intention of producing it again. None. Not one single person has said this will be over by summer...if anything...every company has said the shortages will continue in to 2027.
If no one makes it, there's nothing to sell. EVen if the bubble pops...it takes time to retool.
They quit producing consumer ram to meet the demands for AI. If you really think the corporations aren't going to take advantage of this; well I think we have a whole history of times where shortages lead to price increases that stayed permanent. The prices of everything went up 5 years ago...and did not go down when the supposed problems were solved. If those prices were high due to shortages, they should have dropped....but they didn't.
If they can get people paying $1500 a gig now...then why stop? You don't. You keep charging the stupid high rates and make them the new normal.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sold on that explanation.
If the demand is there, someone will see that as an opportunity and fill it. Might take a while, but it will happen.
Re:Driving up memory prices. (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, I say that's by design.
People can't buy computers if they can't get RAM. If they can't buy computers, then they'll be forced on to another option...like a hosted desktop. Then you have no options and no freedom....just a walled garden where every move you make can be watched.
Brand new motherboards and CPUs cost less than last years stuff; and last years stuff is getting stupid expensive. It's hit a wall. There's no incentive to sell new stuff because no one can use it. Can't afford the last generation because everyone is buying that instead.
By destroying the consumer side first...they can force everyone on to hosted platforms...where they'll ensure a revenue stream and make sure the bubble doesn't pop. Because right now the corporations have every incentive to invest every dollar they can because they know the future for them will be wage-free world of AI workers.
"It might cost us a trillion now but it will save us trillions in the future"
Re: (Score:3)
Then you have no options and no freedom....just a walled garden where every move you make can be MONETIZED.
Fixed that for you. Watching is just a bonus, the real goal is monetization.
Re: (Score:2)
One company in particular:
Funding AI companies, 1) whose demand for GPUs, SSDs and RAM drives up prices of computer hardware during a recession, so people can't upgrade, 2) which don't respect copyright.
And while at the same time asking people to upgrade their computers only so they can run a new version of your OS with new DRM (to enforce copyright) and with supposed AI features that nobody wants.
Re: Driving up memory prices. (Score:2)
If AI wasn't here, do you think memory would still be as high priced, because something or the other would be used as an excuse?
Copilot (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft shoehorning Copilot into everything including your TV, like a parasite.
Re: (Score:2)
They are desperate to not have to write off billions wasted on Clippy v3 aka Copilot AI.
Anyone and everyone mentioning AI (Score:3)
Especially by those who are clueless what it actually is. How it works. How it can be useful. What to watch out for (hallucination, etc).
And watching the company execs who fired a bunch of people cos AI can "do their work / help the other staff to do their work", and finding out a while later that they actually need those people back cos (surprise!) AI can't do the whatever work and they screwed up.
How Environmentalism went out the window..... (Score:5, Insightful)
We have been told for decades now to cut consumption of everything, use less, do this, do that....but AI comes along, and suddenly, we're talking about re-purposing old/decommed naval reactors that use weapons grade uranium and we're back-ordered on gas generators for *years*.
So, anything we did to curb consumption or help the environment was a complete and total waste of time, and stupid.
"We" is not homogenous. (Score:3)
Environmentalism was never really on the table for corporations. Plenty of people are talking about the environmental impact of AI. What you seem to be realizing is that corporations don't give a fuck about society and will gladly fuck it over if they can get away with it and make more profit.
Sock puppets! (Score:2)
Oh wait, that was the dot-com bubble, I'm getting bubbles mixed up.
I understand about recency bias, but (Score:3)
That [1]AI Village garbage [slashdot.org] we just read about yesterday is high on the list.
[1] https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/12/29/004243/rob-pike-angered-by-ai-slop-spam-sent-by-agent-experiment
The vending machine is not stupid (Score:2)
The media keeps calling that vending machine stupid, but in reality is is an experiment and not expected to work perfectly. Anthropic keeps updating and refining it, and they learned a lot in the process.
Re: The vending machine is not stupid (Score:2)
How is it not stupid? In what way is an AI vending machine the most efficient way to do anything, and not just a total waste of resources? Buying shit from Amazon on your smartphone takes fewer resources. A human worker who takes your order requires fewer resources.
Mgt wanting to lay off eveyrone but mgt (Score:4, Insightful)
We have narcissistic CEO types, tapping away in ChatGTP all day, and the LLMs are providing a narcissistic feedback loop. In public companies, axis 2 cluster b personalities tend to group in management, and with LLMs telling these maniacs that they're blessed with cosmic insights, management has become insufferable.
The only good benefit I have seen from AI is that marketing f***wits have all been laid off.
evidence (Score:2)
I imagine that anything accounting related, where AI is used to analyze data directly would be pretty stupid, but I think the dumbest thing that I have seen is this [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] real witness testimony generated by AI in a trial case.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KqrfwGeCko
I accept! (Score:2)
to talk to an AI-powered hologram of Stan Lee for $20.
You pay me $20 and I'll talk to it. Hmmm...$100 is more like it.
Builder.ai (Score:3, Interesting)
Builder.ai ended up being 700 remote workers in India pretending to be bots. The exceptionally stupid part was the company's market cap of something like $1.5 Billion. With that sort of "due diligence" going on I can imaging some over-zealous, greedy hedge fund manager investing $450 Million in a bottle of A-1 Steak Sauce after not stopping or slowing down to read the label completely.
A.I. Run Job Interviews (Score:2)
When applying for a position at a corporation, if you are suddenly thrust into an A.I. driven job interview process. ABORT IMMEDIATELY AND COMPLAIN LOUDLY AND PROFUSELY. Nothing quite so insulting as a corporation hiring but refusing to perform basic human interaction to find an appropriate candidate.
Re: (Score:2)
Right! I got into that situation a couple of months ago, while applying for a job. I had uploaded the resume, filled in all the fields and so on, and suddenly, in the next screen, was an AI interview, where I had to turn on my camera and speak to the AI. That interview ended early, since I was caught off-guard, and I was told that I'd have to wait a month before I could apply again
I did not apply to that job again. Today, in my email, was a survey from that company asking me about the experience. I g
Re: (Score:2)
I was going to say Applicant Tracking Systems. The glorified grep scripts that preceded them were bad enough, but these new LLM-powered ATSes are far worse. They are shockingly even more inflexible than the keyword-matching scripts, and are loaded with biases such as a strong ballot order effect (they prefer the first candidate if given a list), not-invented-here syndrome (they prefer resumes written by the same LLM), status quo bias (they prefer candidates who are most similar to the preferred candidates t
I'm going to go against the grain here... (Score:2)
and discuss the BEST use of AI that I've come across: VirtualDJ.
For those who aren't in the know, club and mobile DJing is largely computer-based now. There are a number of vendors who have software catered to this vertical; the biggest names in the industry are Serato DJ Rekordbox, Traktor, and VirtualDJ.
Two years ago, VirtualDJ added "Stems" to the software, allowing for vocals, instrumentals, bass, and drums to be separated in real-time on computers with GPUs capable of running the models. Stems allowed
Stupidest (Score:5, Funny)
Letting AI write your slashdot question and use the word "stupidest" instead of "the most stupid".
Re: (Score:1)
That's the stupidest complaint I've heard yet.