I keep seeing people call basic automation 'AI' and it drives me nuts

Watched a webinar yesterday where a guy from a startup in Austin kept showing off his 'AI tool' that just sorts data into folders. That's a script, not intelligence. It matters because it waters down what real innovation is, like the new models that can actually reason. How do you even explain the difference to clients when everyone slaps the AI label on everything? Anyone else run into this and have a good way to talk about it?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_jana1mo ago

Tell me about it, I almost fell for a "revolutionary AI" last month that turned out to be a fancy Excel macro. The worst part is I got excited about it for a whole afternoon. It makes the real work so much harder to explain. I try to draw a line between automation that follows set rules and systems that can learn or make a judgment call on new stuff. If it can't handle something it hasn't seen before, it's just a very polite robot.

jenny_coleman1mo ago

Exactly, that line you're drawing is the whole point. So much of what gets called AI now is just automation with a fancy wrapper, and it muddies the water for the real stuff. It's like calling a toaster a "bread chef" because it follows a set program. The real test is when you throw a curveball, like you said. Can it adapt, or does it just give you a polite error message? That's when you know if you're dealing with a tool or something that's actually thinking.

oscar_ellis1mo ago

Feel your pain @the_jana, been there.