i once bought a "smart" electric kettle because i thought it'd be nice to boil my water to exact temperatures for my teas. it had a little button on a little screen to turn it on

and of course the screen stopped working, and that was the singular thing that broke. if the kettle had a physical switch i'd have only lost the ability to boil to exact temperatures instead of becoming fully useless

a similar thing happened with my Quest VR. a singular smart thing broke (the proximity sensor) and it bricked the whole thing (the proximity sensor deteced, well, proximity, and input from that decided if the screen inside was turned on. when it broke, the screen never turned on. the proximity sensor could be disabled - but only from within the settings menu that required the screen to be on in the first place. there was no other way to disable it, and that setting reset every full shut down)

never had that happen with my non smart devices, never had a non-critical feature failing bricked my "dumb" machine. oh the proper graphics card melted in my laptop? whatever i just disabled it, it might not perform as it used to but it's still functional and perfect for just browsing the internet or watching youtube

my dumb printer never just stopped for no reason, my dumb kettle with a physical toggle has been working perfectly for 3 years now, my dumb light bulbs only stop working when they've reached the end of their ability to make light, my dumb devices never refuse to work even when what they can do isn't perfect anymore

i was already annoyed by so many devices being labelled as "smart" when they're not, and now they're also adding "AI" to those things... i hate it here