You have good reasoning there Roger, except for the fact that brainwashing comes from advertising on TV or Radio many, many years ago,
"A million housewives every day, pick a tin of beans and say..." and it isn't one for me, one for you"..
AI is answering a lot of problems with possible solutions, which people act upon... results vary. It learns from feedback and adjusts.
I was given my first computer to work on way back before decimalisation and the conversions were reasonably easy. The Y2K thing was a rip off, I just told clients to grin and bear it, no one noticed the millennium change. I'd even Microwave Oven companies worried.. a load of utter hype (or rhymes with that).
It's the IC555 chip (a timer mechanism) - piece of cake, I used to make electronic die (dice) out of them way back in the 70's to play games with, random number between 1 to 6 please 🤣 and in the case of COBOL based computer systems, well that was even easier. 🤣