Definitely! My Nvidia shield, which came out 6 years ago, does 4k upscaling. Oddly, despite the ancient tech and the current AI obsession, no one is competing with that ability! Machine learning is great and has been developing for decades, making life better in various ways. Large Language Models are what is overhyped and limited in utility.

I remember trying to investigate using crypto as a replacement for international bank transfers. The gas fees were much larger than the greatly inflated fee my bank was charging. Another time, I used crypto to donate to a hacker I liked the work of. I realized the crypto transfer was actually more traceable when accounting for know your customer laws and the public ledger. That was when I realized crypto was truly useless. AI is mildly useful when coding, to point me to packages I wouldn’t have heard of, provide straightforward examples. That’s the only time I use it. The tech industry and investor class are desperate for it to be the next world-changing thing which is leading them to slap it on everything. That will eventually wear off.

I don’t think it’s a false alarm, in the sense that it is totally reasonable to be alarmed. They are cutting crucial stuff before they know what it is. There are a lot of things being cut where we’re only going to understand the impact years from now.

I used to use old phones (Nexus 6P, Galaxy Nexus, Moto X) as security cameras, stopped for exactly this reason. They all got really warm, even with the screen off, and I was uneasy about it. IIRC my Gnex removable battery started expanding a bit! That’s when I stopped using them for it.