The biggest mistake people are making is treating AI as a product instead of a feature.

While people are doing their work, they don't think, "Oh man, I am really excited to talk with AI today, and I can't wait to talk with a chatbot."

People want to do their jobs without being too bored and overwhelmed, and that's where AI comes in. But of course, we cannot hype features; we sell products after all, so that's the state we are in.

If you go to Notion, Slack, or Airtable, the headline emphasizes AI first instead of "Text Editor, Corporate Chat etc".

The problem is that AI is not "the thing", it is the "tool that gets you to the thing".

I wouldn't even call it a feature. It's enabling technology. I've never once said "I would like AI in [some product]." I say: "I would like to be able to [do this task]." If the company adds that feature to a product, I'll buy it. I don't care if the company used AI, traditional algorithms, or sorcery to make the feature work--I just care that it does what I want it to do.

Too many companies are just trying to spoon AI into their product somehow, as if AI itself is a desired feature, and are forgetting to find an actual user problem for it to actually solve.

All true, but then there goes your stratospheric valuations and all the crazy hype. This come to jesus moment may very well deflate one of the few remaining hot areas around software engineering..I could see people being reluctant to stop the hype train as then we'd really have to come to terms with the fact that the "industry" as a whole is kind of in the shitter and it's a less good time to be a software engineer across the board than 5 or 10 years ago.

I wouldn't mind it if it were presented as yet another tool in the box. Maybe have a one-time popup saying "Hey, there's this thing, here's a cool use case, go check it out on your own terms."

In reality, AI sparkles and logos and autocompletes are everywhere. It's distracting. It makes itself the star of the show instead of being a backup dancer to my work. It could very well have some useful applications, but that's for users to decide and adapt to their particular needs. The ham-fisted approach of shoving it into every UI front-and-center signals a gross sense of desperation, neediness, and entitlement. These companies need to learn how to STFU sometimes.

Seriously! The product itself is supposed to be the valuable thing…regardless of the underlying technology.

1000% agree, so many AI "applications" right now are solutions looking for a problem.

I like this take, in fact i feel a little uneasy when i see startups mention "MCP" on their landing pages! Its a protocol and its like saying we use HTTP here.

I could be wrong but, all in all, buy a .com for your "ai" product, such that you survive the Dot-ai bubble [1]

I Love LLM's though!! Amazing math and tech.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble

Agreed. We’ve got the potential to build real bicycles for the mind here and marketing departments are jumping right in to trying to sell people spandex cycling shorts.