The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

>Everybody wanted the Internet.

I don't think this is true. A lot of people had no interest until smartphones arrived. Doing anything on a smartphone is a miserable experience compared to using a desktop computer, but it's more convenient. "Worse but more convenient" is the same sales pitch as for AI, so I can only assume that AI will be accepted by the masses too.

People didn't even want mobile phones. In The Netherlands, there's a famous video of an interviewer asking people on the street ca. 1997 whether they would want a mobile phone. So not even a smartphone, just a mobile phone. The answer was overwhelmingly negative.

I’m at the point where a significant part of me wishes they hadn’t been invented.

We sat yesterday and watched a table of 4 lads drinking beer each just watch their phones. At the slightest gap in conversation, out they came.

They’re ruining human interaction. (The phone, not the beer-drinking lad.)

Think like an engineer to solve the problem. You could start by adjusting the beer-to-lad ratio and see where that gets you.