Nilay Patel says AI products aren't worth their costs to the public
On 6 November 2026 Simon Willison's blog posted a short excerpt from Nilay Patel on The Vergecast, from the episode titled "Big Tech lost big in the 2026 election". The post carries no commentary from Willison; it is the Patel passage alone.
Patel's central claim is blunt: "The products aren't good enough to sell people on the costs." He gives a concrete picture of the cost: you cannot tell people they have to listen to the whine of a data center in their backyard for AI overviews and what he calls some of the most hilarious deep fake slop in history. In his words, it is not worth it to anyone.
He then adds three more assertions in quick succession. Agents, he says, "aren't real" and might not be used the way anyone wants yet (the hedge on "might" is his). The companies are spending more than they are making on these products. And, in passing, refrigerators holding blood storage in Europe are being hacked. No detail is given on that last point.
The second half of the excerpt links the costs to corruption. Patel sums up the case as "The costs are too high. The benefits are not real." Then he describes what happens when you connect that to corruption: to impose these costs on people, CEOs are in the White House shaking Trump's hand, renaming it to the Gulf of America, and paying for a ballroom that people don't want. He calls it "obvious crypto-corruption" and says "it's still slop."
His closing point is about what would change things. The AI industry, he says, will not get out of this until it makes better products: ones where everyone can see, without needing to be convinced and without an ad campaign, that using them makes their life better.
Key facts
- Nilay Patel, speaking on The Vergecast (episode "Big Tech lost big in the 2026 election"), says AI products "aren't good enough to sell people on the costs."
- His example of the cost: a data center's whine in people's backyards, in exchange for AI overviews and deep fake slop.
- He says agents "aren't real" and might not be used the way anyone wants yet, and that companies spend more than they make on these products.
- He links the costs to corruption, citing CEOs at the White House, the Gulf of America renaming and a ballroom, and calls it "obvious crypto-corruption."
- His remedy: the industry needs better products whose benefit is visible without an ad campaign.
Why it matters
This is an opinion, not news of a launch or a finding, but it states a public-facing critique of the AI industry in plain terms: the costs fall on ordinary people (noise from a data center nearby) while the visible benefits, as Patel sees them, are AI overviews and deep fake slop. Patel frames the problem as one of value for the public, and says the industry's way out is better products, not persuasion.
Who it affects
The excerpt speaks about people living near data centers, the general public who are asked to accept those costs, and the AI companies and their CEOs. It does not name which CEOs or companies Patel means.
How to use it
There is nothing to install or adopt here. The passage is useful as a statement of one commentator's test for AI products: whether using them makes a person's life better in a way that is obvious without an ad campaign.
How solid is it
This is a spoken opinion, quoted in a short blog post dated 6 November 2026. No evidence is offered for the claims about hacked refrigerators, corruption or costs; they are Patel's spoken assertions. No figures are given for company spending, revenue or losses, and the excerpt does not give the election results or say what the 2026 election outcome was.
Risks and caveats
Treat the statements as Patel's views, not established fact. The claim that agents aren't real is hedged by Patel himself ("might not be being used the way that anyone wants them to yet"). The corruption link is a political characterisation, and the source gives no date for the Vergecast episode itself, only for the blog post.
“The costs are too high. The benefits are not real.”
— Nilay Patel, The Vergecast: Big Tech lost big in the 2026 election