We are paying more for a PlayStation so that idiots can use ChatGPT to mislead people on dating apps – something is rotten in the state of gaming I need people to understand, AI is the current "thing". We have an industry that produces memory for this planet that is a functional monopoly. Today their excuse is AI. But their excuse for that sudden increase changes roughly every four years. And we continue to let them get away with it, because we collectively blame the consumer. And do know, I'm not saying AI companies get pass from me. That's not the point here. The large AI companies and us regular people are consumers of the exact same product that only three companies provide. Those three companies have been legally found guilty in several courts of law across the world of colluding to increase prices, and because there's not really any other alternative, they chalk the fines up as the cost of business and we write it off as a necessary evil. But when we blame AI (which there's lots to blame AI companies for, again that's beside the point here) we are just blaming a consumer of a product. We are basically saying "Why do they get that thing I wanted. I should be the one who gets it, not them." Now there's a lot of industry regulation and international treaties that ensure we're at the bottom of the list and AI companies pay into keeping that status quo. But let's be real here, if it wasn't them, it would be someone else. When we say the reason computers and technology is getting expensive is because of AI, we are actually avoiding the real culprit here. A tightly controlled market, not unlike say the diamond business of old. And should AI fade away (which math equations that represent ways to optimize pattern matching are something we've found to be incredibly helpful) that tightly controlled, highly colluded, industry remains. And then we eventually find ourselves right back where we left off and are convinced to blame something else. Again, this isn't trying to absolve the sins of AI companies. But it's to point out that this isn't an "AI has done all of this all by itself." And when we do that, we're providing cover for an industry that largely runs corrupt with impunity.