These sorts of products aren't typically driven by consumer wants. Rather they're typically driven by B2B/sales/marketing/investor types, who are primarily focused on finding/addressing secondary markets for further profits, more so than it is about addressing core consumer wants.
In other words, these product decisions aren't really made on the rationale that internet connected coffee makers make sense from the standpoint of a consumer who simply wants coffee made...
It's more: "let's make smart coffee makers so that we can sell to 2 markets:
1) a coffee maker to consumers who want coffee made
2) consumers data/eyeballs to advertisers who want their info/eyes
I thought the reason was well known, and the article briefly touches it...
The liver's great ability to regenerate largely boils down to how homogenous and simple the liver actually is. It's structured more like a battery pack, where you have individual cells that are largely functionally identical to each other that perform the bulk of the work, and they happen to be connected together. If an individual cell fails, (for the most part) all you need to do is merely regrow a new one, and it's orientation matters little (relatively speaking as compared to other organs) so long as it's connected to the rest of the battery pack (organ).
Contrast that to something like a kidney, which has complex orientation that is formed via growth, and which has a high degree of different types of cells where replacing a part isn't as simple as merely regrowing the part which failed, but also about that growth happening in precisely the right location. So instead of it being like having to replace a failed cell in a battery pack, it's like replacing a wheel to a car. Attaching it anywhere (like the windshield for example) won't necessarily fix the issue, it needs to be connected to the axle...
Also, the liver metabolizes a lot of toxins, and some cells die in the process, so there was a strong pressure to replace them. That pressure was our ancestors insisting on eating toxic things like mushrooms and spoiled food until it didn't immediately kill them.
> our ancestors insisting on eating toxic things like mushrooms and spoiled food
Presumably this didn't happen because are ancestors were dumb, but rather because the ability to process slightly spoiled food is a significant advantage in an environment where fresh food is sometimes scarce?
Our very distant ancestors weren't even human, or biped, so they were indeed quite dumb compared to us; but the sibling comment is right, it was food scarcity. Even us modern humans will eat anything if our survival depends on it.
Another useful evolved ability to eat suspicious things is vomiting. Not all animals can quickly purge toxins that way, cows, horses, or rats, for example.
That’s an uncompetitive market. No one can outcompete on service, so they can only compete on price, but why would you in such a circumstance, it would only hurt you, so nobody does.
This is what people seem to forget... you don’t need monopolies or collusion for markets to be uncompetitive. Collusion works fundamentally because participants aren't competing with each other... not for the fact people made a secret agreement. It is entirely possible for markets to be completely uncompetitive even without a monopoly or any collusion going on.
I once saw someone say something like this: "Working in a monopoly mega corp is like working for a 20 person company, connected to 20 other 20 person companies, connected to 20 similar entities containing similar 20 companies, with each group of 20 persons in each competing with each other for investment/budgeting."
Maybe hyperbole... but to some extent I think that's about right. It's like you're not even a cohesive unit other than that thin marketing veneer facing the outside world.
Things are often built in silos. Integration of products is almost always an after thought. Decisions/changes are done in response to outside markets or internal political games for promotional appeal and money. The turnover of people retiring, new hires coming. Most every mega corp today is nothing like it was 30 years ago. And so, things typically end up half-baked and the customer left wondering why the products are often such a mess.
Now some companies do things better than others, and may have their stellar areas and their bad areas. Same goes for cities, and even countries, when you think about it.
"No that's not right, it should be a red bricked house. Not a brown one."
> AI redraws a red bricked house.
"No. It should have a 2 car garage, sit on top of a hill. Also it should have a front porch, and have a tree right in front."
> AI then draws a red bricked house on top a hill with a 2 car garage with a front porch and a tree right in front.
...
The issue is that people think AI should automagically create some vague idea in of theirs, without having to do the work of spelling out all the exact details. So AI (like people) must make some assumptions about what wasn't specified. Like since you didn't specify a "red bricked house" in your initial prompt, but merely a "house"... it had to come up with something as to the color, and did as you otherwise asked, but it didn't know you actually wanted a "red bricked house", since you never specified that detail. Hence why it failed to do what you wanted, and you had to "review and correct it".
Again this isn't solely an intelligence problem, but an inherent problem in language/communication, of unsaid assumptions/specifications. Of being unaware of what you don't know, unaware of your own assumptions, sometimes even being unaware of what you even want. It's why AI can't fully get rid of jobs in software.
But sometimes people just don't care. They just want a picture of a house made. Anything remotely resembling a house will do, not necessarily a solid one, or one that can withstand a magnitude 8 earthquake. You know... like something people can put up in minutes so they don't have to do hard work... such as a shabby old tent. And AI is very good at generalizing, so it can in fact achieve this. So everyone reports they are far more productive now, putting up tent after tent. Meanwhile, the people responsible for the slop have a nightmare to review...
Yup. This is basically what Steve Jobs argued throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and championed as a philosophy. Adopting it, took Apple from being a struggling tech company on the verge of bankruptcy, to the dominant personal consumer technology maker it is today.
In other words, these product decisions aren't really made on the rationale that internet connected coffee makers make sense from the standpoint of a consumer who simply wants coffee made...
It's more: "let's make smart coffee makers so that we can sell to 2 markets:
... and make more profits for ourselves".