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AI will fail.

And everyone agrees.

Ruben Hassid
Jun 23, 2026

2008 “ I’ve been frankly confused by this fascination that everybody has with Netflix.” — Jim Keyes, CEO of Blockbuster, on streaming.
Netflix passed 300 million subscribers by 2024. Blockbuster has one store left.

2008 “ It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?” — Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, on cloud computing.
The cloud became a ~$700-billion-a-year market. Oracle now sells it, about $34 billion a year of cloud computing.

2007“ There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.” — Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, on the iPhone.
Apple has sold over 2.3 billion iPhones. The most profitable product in history.

2001 “ Linux is a cancer.” — Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, on open-source software.
By 2015 Linux ran the entire internet, every supercomputer, and every Android phone. And Microsoft itself joined the Linux Foundation.

... (additional historical quotes omitted for brevity) ...

Why AI Will Fail.

So here we are again.

The internet, the smartphone, social media — all led to today’s AI.

But AI isn’t so good. AI Will Fail:

2023 — “ So much money and attention concentrated on so little a thing… something so trivial when contrasted with the human mind.” — Noam Chomsky, The New York Times, on ChatGPT.

2023 — “ ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web.” — Ted Chiang, The New Yorker, on ChatGPT.

2024 — “ What trillion-dollar problem will AI solve? AI technology is exceptionally expensive, and to justify those costs, it must solve complex problems, which it isn’t designed to do.” — Jim Covello, Head of Global Equity Research, Goldman Sachs.

2024 — The productivity gains from AI are “ likely to be minimal.” — Daron Acemoglu, MIT economist.

2024 — “ Generative AI: too much spend, too little benefit?” — Goldman Sachs, report title.

So yes.

AI hallucinates.

It forgets sources.

It invents court cases.

It gives people six fingers.

It makes videos where physics is wrong.

It writes like a genius one minute and like a kid the next.

And yet.

People are still using it to write code, explain contracts, design images, edit videos, summarize meetings, answer customers, tutor kids, translate manuals, draft ads, build apps, and replace the first blank page of almost every creative process.

AI is still terrible.

So was the first call.

So was the buffering wheel.

So was the frozen computer.

So was the ugly first website.

So was the blurry first camera phone.

The early version of the future is usually embarrassing.

Then it becomes the present.

History doesn’t repeat itself. But the people betting against it do.

Do you?

PS: You don’t want your company to be left behind.

Reading about AI is useful.

But it won’t change how your company works.

If you have 50+ people on your team, adopting AI is not a “ send them a newsletter” problem. It is a systems problem.

Your people have different roles, clients, tools, workflows, permissions, data, risks, and habits. My newsletter, sent to 750,000 people, can’t do that.

That is what I help companies fix.

I run tailored AI workshops for enterprise teams. We map where AI can actually save time, where it should not be used, and how your people can adopt it without creating chaos.

If your company has 50+ people, message me.

Message Ruben Hassid
I offer a free discovery call to my subscribers.

Humanly yours, Ruben Hassid.