The sad truth is that it is because while we all appreciate hard work and a good job, that isn't what is needed to move forward in the world of business. Creaky leaky products held together under the hood by scotch tape and string are fine. You don't make more money having a better product. A more performant tool. Better benchmarks. End users, aside for writing tools for other engineers, don't care. They really don't. Word 95 probably opens faster than word today.

Management has realized this. Hey I can outsource to bangalore/hyderabad/east europe/ai, get something that barely works, and just market the crap out of it. Look at the sort of companies, products, and services that dominate markets today. These aren't leaders in quality or engineering. They are leaders in marketing. Marketing is what sells. Marketing can sell billions of steaming turds. Nike shoes are pieces of shit but it's marketing that makes the brand and provides all value in the stock. The world doesn't value quality. It values noise and pretty feathers.

I agree. AI right now is at a level of "knowledgeable friend", not of "professional with years of real world experience". You'd listen to what your friend has to say, but taking pills after one of their suggestions? Dumb idea. It's great to brainstorm things, but just like your knowledgeable friend that likes reading Wikipedia pages a bit too much you need to really check it's not reaching to conclusions too quickly

> but even certain governments which shall not be named

Why can't you name them, and give us some context? Is this based on public info, or not?