About a decade ago I worked at a water consultancy company (of which Thames Water happened to be a client) to build a catalogue website for pipe condition assessment technologies. Already at the time that I was building it, there were dozens of these finished products with all kinds of sensors for many sizes of pipes, be they dry or with water still flowing inside. Yes, there is some demand for these devices, but there is also a lot of technology out there already for many use cases.
All that to say: I too wonder what makes this one so special.
And what about the Butlerian Jihad? It was a war against Thinking Machines, devices that would do the thinking for people. People were becoming less critical, they stagnated, left all that thinking work to machines, which meant that the technocratic class that controlled these machines effectively controlled mankind.
I think Frank Herbert would have a field day with our modern era of algorithms.