This week in Dublin I attended an interesting event on AI and its myths. Several uses of AI were described with their pros and cons, and wise advices were given about being excited with using AI tools while being wary of potential problems they could generate.
It seems as now “AI” is the buzzword in any field. Last week on the “China Daily” newspaper I read about how much China is investing in AI to increase calculation power, telecommunication efficiency and coverage, transport and related services, etc..
Drones are making more and more use of AI in civilian and (unfortunately) military uses, banks and finance ecosystem invest more effort on AI to identify frauds and optimise their service such as crossed checks and analysis to grant a mortgage, for instance.
All good, but someone highlighted the side-effect of an AI intensive use: energy consumed, water used to cool mainframe servers, etc.. which means a huge environmental impact.
In the past a lot of criticism were raised against Google and the huge use of energy they make to provide search results in fractions of a second. Now we have the AI-based internet browser – Perplexity – that, beyond representing a big business, is not yet clear how much energy is going to devour, once it will be widespread.
Talking about business, since a few months every time I open a Microsoft365 file, a pop-up window comes out asking whether I would like to use CoPilot, the recent Microsoft’s AI-based innovation. Being curious, I wanted to check how I could add it to my suite, but I realised I should pay an additional £24/month to use it (discounted price, by the way).
Wait a minute: should I pay to be a tester and to make them improve their product with no direct and immediate reward?
The same applies to Adobe that hammers me every time I open a PDF file. They offer me one day free (wow!) to learn how to use their AI-based feature, and then I would be charged an extra monthly fee; therefore, I didn’t bother to investigate it further.
Some questions have come up to my mind: AI-based system could be the future – as some visionaries say – and they may become right, but why should this be “co-funded” by customers? and what reliability of provided results we would receive?
The following news on “Taco Bell rethinks AI drive-through after man orders 18,000 waters” tells a lot.
Stefano Mainero
EPN Consulting and EPN Consulting Research and Innovation Founder & CEO
Article written by human beings without any use of AI. EPN Consulting Ltd. copyright 2025
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