… the internet was not immediately useful in a million different ways for almost every person.

Even if you skip ARPAnet, you’re forgetting the Gopher days and even if you jump straight to WWW+email==the internet, you’re forgetting the mosaic days.

The applications that became useful to the masses emerged a decade+ after the public internet and even then, it took 2+ decades to reach anything approaching saturation.

Your dismissal is not likely to age well, for similar reasons.

the "usefulness" excuse is irrelevant, and the claim that phones/internet is "immediately useful" is just a post hoc rationalization. It's basically trying to find a reasonable reason why opposition to AI is valid, and is not in self-interest.

The opposition to AI is from people who feel threatened by it, because it either threatens their livelihood (or family/friends'), and that they feel they are unable to benefit from AI in the same way as they had internet/mobile phones.