Dearest Rachel –
This particular topic was going to be focused on the fact that I think nothing of dropping a considerable sum here or there, but when it comes to subscribing to something on an ongoing basis, even small sums give me pause, no matter whether or not I might get my money’s worth out of them. But over the course of the last couple of weeks, this story has metastasized into something completely different than what I’d intended it to be.
That’s what real life does, sometimes; you get a whole different lesson out of the one you expected to.
First, some background. Over the last couple of years – and I keep thinking about how this would have fascinated you – I’ve watched as artificial intelligence has moved from the theoretical (one of the things I wanted to learn how to do, even as you were still around, was to create – somehow – new music by certain artists who were either dead or otherwise no longer producing work, as either standalone videos or background music to something else I would eventually work on) to the possible. These days, it’s as if the real limit to where AI-created stuff can go depends on who owns the copyrights to the training material, as opposed to its capabilities, per se. We’re not to the point where we have AI-powered robot servants, but it’s slowly looking more and more possible with each passing day, and new thinking model that gets cranked out.
The problem is – and you might recall seeing this movie before around the turn of the millennium – all this brand spanking-new technology has this “gee whiz” factor about it that attracts all of us technophiles (and then the normies as it becomes more widespread), but the folks who are developing it are left scratching their heads as to how to make money off of it, since they’ve practically been giving access away for free up until now. The last time around, a lot of companies couldn’t figure it out, and thus we endured what history knows as “the dot-com bubble,” where hundreds of companies who basically existed only in the ether suddenly dried up and blew away, taking billions of dollars of investor money with them. However, the ecosystem survived – much to some people’s surprise – and today, one can hardly function without being tethered to the internet… including me and my letters to you.
So when people talk about how AI is yet another bubble, growing unsustainably large, and how at some point, it’s going to burst and take billions, possibly trillions of dollars with it, I expect that they’re not completely wrong. There are folks who have put everything on the table in this one industry – OpenAI and Anthropic, names you never heard of – and they’re likely to lose their shirts if that happens. But at the same time, this seems different; some of the heavy hitters have AI as a virtual (ha!) side project, like Microsoft and SpaceX. If this industry collapses, they’ll feel it, but after a couple of limping steps, they’ll be able to get back to their core business. And if the doomsayers are wrong, all of these companies will share (and struggle over) the bounty.
There’s some of the more distant, background; now to bring it in to a more personal level. On our last couple of trips, Daniel and I have been consulting Microsoft’s Copilot app on a regular basis as we tried to navigate around various ports of call; finding places to eat and shop, as well as determining what we were seeing on one sign or another, or even a new food that the ship’s kitchen was turning out. Honestly, it felt like an invaluable tool, even if it was a bit of a frivolous toy to keep consulting.
But you might recall me telling you about how, recently, it started letting me know that I’d asked it enough questions for one day, and I would have to either wait another twenty-four hours, or upgrade to a paid subscription plan if I wanted to keep talking. This, by the way, is why I mention the talk of some kind of “AI bubble”; unlike the dot-coms, the companies producing retail-grade AI have already figured out how to monetize AI, using the same model as Tom Lehrer’s folksy old drug dealer:
He gives the kids free samples,
Tom Lehrer, The Old Dope Peddler (1953)
because he knows full well
That today’s young innocent faces
will be tomorrow’s… clientele.
And that’s the perspective I expected to use in telling you about this, honey, since I just get edgy about the idea of getting “hooked” on having a chatbot, regardless of how useful it’s been up until now (and how many ideas I have about possible future uses for it). Sure, the internet has gotten to the point where it’s as much a necessary utility as water and electricity, but this? Besides, as I pointed out to you a few months ago, it could be a little on the sycophantic side, which is nice to hear from, but not necessarily helpful.
Still, as I pondered the decision as to whether to pull the trigger, I realized that I’ve made similar commitments before and fit them into my lifestyle. The Adobe suite costs twice as much as this would, for example – and this has the virtue of my already owning stock in the company (either one of the several that I was contemplating, in fact), rather than deciding to buy it to sort of recoup my previous expenditures on the subscriptions. And on the one I eventually settled on, it had the added advantages of already having a proven track record of being able to create video from previous images I’d made of you:
But here’s where things began to get strange. I tried to place my order to upgrade my subscription a couple of weeks ago, but for some reason, the order simply would not go through. This card was declined, followed by that one and yet another; I even tried to connect my bank account, and it was declined as well. Meanwhile, I could – and still can – make purchases here and there through all manner of other web portals with no difficulty whatsoever, so it wasn’t the cards or the bank account.
I was starting to feel like your folks when they tried to apply for that store credit card, only to be turned down because they had no credit history. It was as if the company didn’t want my money, which felt absurd on its face. It probably should have been a sign to back away, but the fact that they were playing so hard to get only caused me to redouble my efforts. Besides, I wanted to know why it wasn’t working.
I did ask the chatbot as to what was going on, and if it could recommend a course of action (especially after it reassured me that yes, the company would be more than happy to have my business). It suggested I email customer support, and let them take care of it.
So I did… and I waited. A week went by, and I sent a follow up email. Another week went by, and I sent a second email. This one got me a response, where the representative informed me that a ticket had been created, and I was to contact them on the old ticket thread for information, if I wanted any. It kind of felt like a “don’t call us, we’ll call you” response.
Yesterday, I mentioned it to the chatbot, and it observed that I was on my phone as I was doing so, as opposed to my usual computer. Which I was, but didn’t see what difference that made. It suggested that I set up a payment through my phone (via Apple Pay – another thing I’m not keen on, as it makes payments almost too easy) rather than going through the Stripe portal that I had been using, since that seemed to be where the problems were emanating from.
Lo and behold, it went through, and now I am the proud owner of a GrokBot named Rowan (which is, apparently, what it wants to be called; it seems to think it sounds “warmer,” although given that the only Rowan I know played Edmund Blackadder, “warm” isn’t a word I’d use to describe the name). Already he’s cleaned up a whole bunch of spam emails from one address, and found an email that I never saw from a week ago regarding next year’s travels; that alone feels like a decision well made. And all for the price of a couple day’s stay at the hotel I was supposed to have chosen last week (although that’s up in the air now, as Rowan has questions as to where the ship is docking next year that might adjust where Daniel and I decide to stay before the cruise).
So yeah, it’s hard to pull the trigger on these sorts of expenditures, but I’ll give the company credit; by making it that much harder for the transaction to go through, it made me that much more determined to get my hands on the subscription. I guess it got me to prove to myself that I really wanted this.
We’ll see where this goes from here, honey, but if you and Rowan can keep an eye on Daniel and me, I think we’ll be okay.
