If you read some of the AI articles circulating these days, you’d think we’re living in a technological utopia.
Apparently, people are designing entire operating systems between rolling out of bed and their feet hitting the floor. Websites are being created through snoring creatively at night, thus directing AI to produce award-winning designs that would make Don Draper weep with envy.
They claim to have built production-level Fortune 500 applications between beers at halftime on Saturday – zero bugs, ironclad security, and customer satisfaction that somehow exceeds mathematical possibility at 110%.
I can poke fun at this because I work with AI technologies daily, and these claims are easy targets. Their stories are equivalent to me telling you I teleported to our meeting in my Boeing 737.
It is amazing technology with untold potential. But you have to know its limitations. These hype engineers have surface-level notions of what the tool can do but lack deep understanding. They are seriously damaging AI’s perception by using it to market their own inflated brilliance.
At the same time, every event is now made to seem as if it is about AI. Do you have a session about using Outlook? Bring in an AI expert to talk about basic translation or summarisation features, and call it an AI event.
The real potential of AI is hurt by these people but also by the limitations of free (and free-ish) AI solutions and their mediocrity. While there is value in the free offerings, you can imagine them a bit as if a stranger came up to you to offer free tutoring for your child. You would ask two questions:
(1) How good is this going to be?
(2) What are they going to get out of it?
These tools still shape people’s perception. It’s like giving people a Commodore 64 and saying it’s a computer. It’s not technically wrong but we all know better computers can do a whole lot more.
We’re trapped between gurus promising a work-free future tomorrow and generative tools that still draw six-legged zebras.
The core problem is a massive expectations gap. Imagine a project that is given to two developers:
One promises a delivery in 3 months.
The other estimates 9 months.
Both deliver in 6 months. The first developer failed, the second is a hero.
It’s not about the final delivery; it’s about the perception shaped by the initial promise. Right now, the AI hype machine is promising a 3-month delivery.
This is powerful, emerging technology. The promise is immense, but we still have a way to go. Let’s be honest about that.
