zlacker

>>LucidL+(OP)
My anxiety about falling behind with AI plummeted after I realized many of these tweets are overblown in this way. I use AI every day, how is everyone getting more spectacular results than me? Turns out: they exaggerate.

Here are several real stories I dug into:

"My brick-and-mortar business wouldn't even exist without AI" --> meant they used Claude to help them search for lawyers in their local area and summarize permits they needed

"I'm now doing the work of 10 product managers" --> actually meant they create draft PRD's. Did not mention firing 10 PMs

"I launched an entire product line this weekend" --> meant they created a website with a sign up, and it shows them a single javascript page, no customers

"I wrote a novel while I made coffee this morning" --> used a ChatGPT agent to make a messy mediocre PDF

>>pizzat+ua
One of my favorite stories from the dotcom bust is when people, after the bust, said something along the lines of: "Take Pets.com. Who the hell would buy 40lb dogfood bags over the internet? And what business would offer that?? It doesn't make sense at all economically! No wonder they went out of business."

Yet here we are, 20 years later, routinely ordering FURNITURE on the internent and often delivered "free".

My point being, sure, there is a lot of hype around AI but that doesn't mean that there aren't nuggets of very useful projects happening.