The LLM age has shown us how quickly the market is willing to settle for “not nothing” instead of “something good”.

You’re on to something there. During the “AI” hype, I’ve seen several people claim that this could be the last gasp for late stage capitalism. Growth has plateaued, and they did not have anything more to sell us at a profit.

So they introduce a new artificial need, and promote it like their continued existence depended on it… because it does. But that was exactly my original point: nobody needs “AI”, except the people peddling it.