The Black Box Gamble: Choosing Consumer Tech in a Gen AI Landscape is Reminiscent of "VHS vs. Betamax"

The Black Box Gamble:
Choosing Consumer Tech in a Gen AI Landscape is Reminiscent of “VHS vs. Betamax”

The Hidden Risks Behind Gen AI Models in Consumer Tech Choices

❖ Briefly ❖

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, consumers found themselves in the midst of an unprecedented technology battle: VHS vs. Betamax. These two videotape formats, each backed by different companies, were vying to become the standard for home video recording and playback. Both brought cinema into the living room, yet each did so with distinct technical advantages and trade-offs. Betamax, developed by Sony, boasted superior picture quality and reliability; while VHS, supported by JVC, offered longer recording times and eventually a larger library of tapes.

Yet for consumers, the decision went far beyond specs. Purchasing a VCR was a significant investment, and because the formats were incompatible, choosing one meant committing to its ecosystem — one that could potentially become obsolete. In the end, VHS prevailed leaving Betamax owners with machines that could no longer access new content. This "VHS vs. Betamax" dilemma became a defining moment in consumer tech history, illustrating the real-world impact of gambling on the "wrong" format.

Fast-forward to today, and consumers once again face high-stakes choices in their tech purchases. Only this time, the format wars involve everyday devices like smartphones, tablets, and laptops — each now deeply embedded with Generative AI technologies. And whereas the VHS versus Betamax struggle focused on “How” content was recorded and played back; today’s “black-box” concern with AI-driven consumer products focuses on “What” is recorded and played back!

You see, companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and OpenAI train and fine-tune their Generative AI Models on distinct subsets of internet data, while also filtering allowable prompt inputs and responses. Because these details are kept confidential for competitive reasons, the biases and limitations embedded in AI-driven products remain opaque to consumers that purchase and rely on them. Just to clarify, I’m not referring to stand-alone “chat-apps” that users can simply download and switch between; but rather to hardware-assisted Generative AI technologies deeply integrated within devices, making them non-interchangeable.

I own an AI-assisted Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra for my AI research, and would appreciate being able to switch between its Galaxy AI underpinnings - (“Betamax”) - to an OpenAI engine - (“VHS”) - but I’m stuck with the former “format”. And, while I can mitigate this limitation to some extent as a technical person, regular consumers do not have that option – they are locked into the “format” they selected!

The solution, of course, is for AI companies to establish a standard for operating system and hardware interface abstractions that allow owners to add and switch between various Generative AI platforms; much like how current standards do for Bluetooth and display devices.

Sadly, this path is unlikely to materialize anytime soon; because AI-infused consumer products are emerging as a necessary revenue stream for these companies — helping to offset research, model training, and data center costs. And considering the enormous revenue potential of ad-insertions within model responses, exclusive partnerships between AI companies and hardware manufacturers will be crucial to securing market share.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Researched and Written By: Noelle Milton Vega

References:

• Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra and S10+