Humans sometimes act collectively in one organization that has competiting goals from other organizations, including organizations of which it is a subset. That's not new, it's literally older than civilization.
True. But interestingly enough, sometimes the lowest level customer-facing elements of these groups manage to completely ignore such goals and take the side of the consumer.
Doesn't happen when you're dealing with a true AI at those levels.
But yeah, there's nothing worse than rich people when there's a competition between honest dealing and greed. Greed wins for them every time. That's usually how they got rich in the first place. In a way, those lower-level workers (and even low-level managers) are sometimes there to mitigate the damage that can do (as well as to take all the pushback and convert it into something that management can comprehend).
So yeah, I don't think corporations are particularly "AI" until you get mechanization at the customer-facing level. But at that point, it sort of is. And yes, that includes automated answering systems when you try to call them on the phone or get assistance online, particularly when there's frequently no clear option for what you're actually trying to contact them about (sometimes even intentionally).
A corporation that thinks that it doesn't actually need feedback from its consumers (and users/viewers/audience, when those aren't the same people) is doomed to fail eventually, anyway. It may not be immediate, but they'll eventually lose touch enough to be the cause of their own demise. Facebook and "X" are actually good examples... they may not be dead yet, but they've already got some serious symptoms of the disease that will eventually kill them. Even YouTube is starting to make some pretty dumb decisions, but they'll likely last a quite a bit longer than the other two mentioned, mainly because of the "content creator" class wedged between them and the general public.
A truly "optimized" system of moneymaking is always doomed to fail on its own greed. It's just a question of when. Such things can last for quite some time, but they'll eventually destroy themselves as their internal culture gradually loses touch with the parts of external reality that can't be properly expressed in an equation or be accounted for on those silly graphs they enjoy so much. What those goofballs at the top sometimes don't realize is that the people they look down on the most (and often consider firing) in the lower levels often protect them from that somewhat, and that local conditions and cultures sometimes clash against company-wide policy.
Of course, sometimes the only thing keeping them afloat is lack of competition (or lack of competition that doesn't do the exact same problematic things). They're actually quite good at managing that part. But that just means the entire industry/business model goes down with them in some cases. They like to blame that on "trends" but it's often actually their own mismanagement and inflexibility to blame. They've often learned to rely too heavily on the very thing that's causing the problem, too.
