Next killer AI feature is no AI!

Computerworld.com reported that “As artificial intelligence creeps into every corner of our lives, an absence of AI may soon be a premium experience worth paying for.”  The July 9, 2026 article entitled “The next killer AI feature? No AI at all” (https://www.computerworld.com/article/4193950/killer-ai-feature.html) included these comments:

It’s an almost amusingly extreme contrast: While the myopic world of tech people (and the type of mostly AI-powered “thought leaders” you see posting in turbo-speed on LinkedIn) are waxing endlessly about AI’s amazing impact on society and all the ways it’s, like, totally revolutionizing workflow, bruh, the average human’s take on AI can best be summed up with a single word:

Exasperation.

With shockingly little exception, almost every non-tech-obsessed organism I interact with reacts with something between an eye-rolling sigh and a fed-up facepalm whenever the prevalence of AI arises. It’s almost like having an on-demand in-person GIF gallery of “frustration” available at your fingertips — just mention AI, and you’ll get a meme-worthy reaction from anyone around you.

It’s such a dramatic divergence from the glowingly excited hype we hear left and right from the tech industry itself and the seemingly small but vocal group of overly enthusiastic evangelists who create an echo chamber around it. And that very contrast and the disparity between what tech companies are giving us and what tech users actually want these days led me to a bit of an epiphany this week:

AI may well be creating a killer feature that people will be willing to pay to possess. It’s just not the one most AI-fixated entities are focused on creating — quite the opposite, in fact.

What do you think?