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I don’t recall a buzzword being as obsessively used as “AI” is today. Everything is being boosted by AI or made possible because of AI or will make you more money because of AI. It’s everywhere — because if you haven’t gotten on the AI bandwagon by now, you must be behind, and that would be bad news for your company.

One of the problems is that companies using AI a lot are having a hard time providing to themselves that it’s worth the money. But there’s a bigger industry problem beneath that. Even with prices that may not be worth the product’s use, the companies providing AI services are massively subsidizing the product. Uh oh….

Let me say this before someone jumps on me: Yes, AI is good and useful for some things. In fact, for some focused things, I do think it should be used and improved. Broadly, though, it seems AI comes at much higher cost than worth.

Just on the financial side of things, I just read that OpenAI (the creator of ChatGPT) went from a $5.09 billion net loss in 2024 to a $38.53 billion net loss in 2025. That’s according to leaked OpenAI audited financial statements that were published by Ed Zitron and verified by the Financial Times.