A recent meme captures the gnawing artificial-intelligence backlash: A worker says, »AI turns this single bullet point into a long email I can pretend I wrote.« In the next panel, »AI makes a single bullet point out of a long email I can pretend I read.«
Funny. But in reality, there’s a lot more going on. Right on cue with the backlash are questions about AI’s business model. This month, a Journal headline stated, »No One Knows How to Price AI Tools.« How true. Do you bundle it like Microsoft Copilot or like Google’s AI Overview to show up above web search results (which apparently can be turned off only by cursing at it)? Should you charge $20 a month? Or $200 like ChatGPT Pro? Or offer the open-source Chinese DeepSeek for cheap? It makes a difference as bills keep piling up for announced data centers and expensive Nvidia chips.
