My first ever article for The Irish Catholic was regarding the new Apple intelligence and the future of AI. I got one thing right and one thing wrong. Apple intelligence has been a total disaster, from different features being laughable because of glitches to the much awaited ‘new and smarter Siri’ being pushed back till 2027, what could go wrong did go wrong for the trillion-dollar big tech company. What I did get right however, was the push for AI and software developments advancing to a pace even they can’t comprehend.
From Open AI’s ChatGPT releasing new models every other month to compete with China’s DeepSeek AI, consumers have a lot to choose from to get help from. All this clatter of AI news articles and YouTube videos scattered around my feed got me thinking, is this all exciting? Are new technological releases dare I say, boring?
Conclusion
The conclusion I came up with is yes, they are. Companies have now started to hide their laziness behind the term ‘AI’ highlighted on their feature list. Samsung is a great example for this. Their latest phone launch which was the s25 series was a snooze fest to say the least, as the whole event was just mumbling about their AI features. Did the phone have any hardware update? No. They shamelessly launched last year’s phone, slapped some software tweaks and called it a day. Apple does the same, with every iteration just being boring as the last, and its showing in its sale figures.
Consumers want to show off their latest purchase, they want to themselves feel like they have gotten something out of this world, but sadly it’s not the case. I remember there was a time where everyone, including tech nerds like me would wait for the latest iPhone or Samsung phone. The battle for new design, cameras, faster chipsets (Apple still innovates here), and till this date I will never forget how Steve Jobs unveiled the MacBook Air by taking it out from an envelope. People loved and still love it; it’s simple consumer psychology. Buying a new product should feel like a new product and not look like the previous 10 products. Yes, the software experience might be interesting, but that has also started to become dated.
The Catholic Church has started to use technology in many ways such as Virtual and Augmented Reality to showcase different artefacts, different chatbots and a famous experiment done in Switzerland, AI Jesus”
Artificial Intelligence on smartphones is a great symphony, with different tools available for each problem you face daily. With voice assistance (not you Siri) being more human like as possible, it is literally like asking help from a friend. How sustainable is all this though? Not many people know the dangerous these big data centres have on the environment, with water wastage and e-wastage being the top contenders. The misuse of AI in many form factors is another dangerous trend that has been seeing around the world, and it is something that needs to be taken into consideration.
I have mentioned this before, if educational institutions keep denying the helpful tool AI is and train students from a young age, it is more likely going to be misused in a horrible way. Priests could start talking about different technologies and how they can be such an excellent tool for everyone to the younger generation, and it will be great for young people to listen and understand. The Catholic Church has started to use technology in many ways such as Virtual and Augmented Reality to showcase different artefacts, different chatbots and a famous experiment done in Switzerland, AI Jesus.
New
Consumers want something new. Retro or nostalgia only usually works for fashion brands that have the audience for it. What smartphone companies are doing is not innovation, but recycling for the sake of it. With these devices being more expensive by the minute, one can ask, should companies start releasing one phone every other year? Well, I laugh while writing this, knowing that Apple alone has 5 different phones in their latest 16 line-up, priced ridiculously but also a clever strategy to make consumers eye for the most expensive one.
Small smartphone manufactures are the only hope, one being a UK based company called ‘Nothing’. Yes, it is the real name, and they make excellent, phones with excellent prices, and beautiful and modern designs. Nokia was pompous when they had stiff competition, and they said no one can throw them down, look what happened to them. I hope that in the future, we see more real innovations that can help and benefit us as humans, because innovation never dies, and it should never. God Bless!
Rohith Kinattukara is a Catholic student at Griffith College Dublin studying MSc in Procurement and Supply Chain Management who loves to write and breathes tech.