I wouldn’t say bad, but the generative ai and llm are definitely underbaked and shoving everything under the sun into them is going to create garbage in, garbage out. And using it for customer support where it will inevitably offer either bad advice or open you up to lawsuits seems shortsighted to say the least.

They were calling the rest machine learning(ML) a couple years ago. There are valid uses for ML though. Image/video upscaling and image search are a couple examples.

No it wasn't. Here's how I know: all the valid concerns that came about how additional regulation would disproportionately stifle open source alternatives were immediately ignored by the vocal online critics (and the corporate techbros overhyping sci-fi apocalypses). And then when open alternatives appeared anyway nobody on the critical side considered them appropriate or even a lesser evil. The narrative didn't move one bit.

Because it wasn't about openness or closeness, it was a tribal fight, like all the tribal fights we keep having, stoked by greed on one end and viral outrage on the other. It's excruciating to watch.