I don’t understand how someone can be so out of touch with both reality and technology. The points were: 1) the restaurant improved by paying people do research on their customers and 2) AI can’t provide meaningful relationships.

Anyone doing any kind of AI realizes that AI is likely better at doing (1) than humans, certainly good enough to fool most people. And anyone reading the news can’t avoid the panic stories about how “young people” are forming relationships with AI instead of people.