Call it AI, call it Super Intelligence, only 2% of consumers are buying it

The White House assembled tech's biggest names this week, from Zuckerberg to Musk to Anthropic's Dario Amodei, for an AI safety pledge Trump called "morally binding." He also signed an executive order officially rebranding AI as "super intelligence." It's a fascinating bit of political theater, but here's the problem: only 2% of consumers are actually buying AI products, according to the latest data.

That's not a rounding error. That's a crater-sized gap between what the industry is selling and what people actually want. Meta and OpenAI are scrambling to put friendlier faces on their AI assistants, softening the robotic edge with more human-like interactions. But cosmetic changes won't solve the fundamental issue: most people still don't see a compelling reason to pay for AI.

The rebrand from AI to "super intelligence" is particularly telling. When adoption stalls, marketing teams reach for bigger words. It's the same playbook we saw with blockchain becoming "Web3" and clouds becoming "edge computing." The technology might be impressive in labs and demos, but consumer behavior tells the real story.

Part of the problem is that AI companies are still solving problems most people don't have. Chatbots are cool, image generators are fun for a weekend, and summarization tools are occasionally useful. But none of these have become daily necessities for the average person the way smartphones or social media did. The value proposition remains fuzzy.

The enterprise market is a different story entirely. Businesses are integrating AI into workflows, customer service, and data analysis because they can measure ROI. But consumer AI is stuck in the awareness phase, where everyone knows about it but few are willing to pull out their credit cards. Safety pledges and executive orders won't change that math.

The gap between Washington's AI anxiety and consumer indifference is enormous. Regulators are worried about existential risks while ordinary people are deciding whether ChatGPT Plus is worth $20 a month. Both perspectives matter, but right now they're happening in completely separate universes. The industry needs to bridge that gap with actual utility, not just better branding.

What this means for you: If you're building with AI, focus ruthlessly on solving real problems people already know they have. The mass market doesn't care about super intelligence or safety summits. They care about saving time, making money, or being entertained. Try this prompt with your AI assistant: "I'm building [your product]. Interview me about the specific daily frustration it solves, then tell me if that problem is painful enough that someone would pay to fix it." Use that reality check before you scale.