A 19 year old intern made me question the whole AI hype cycle

I was at a BBQ last Saturday in Austin and got stuck talking to my buddy's kid who interns at some AI startup. I expected the usual buzzword soup about changing the world, but instead he told me his team spends 80 percent of their time cleaning garbage data just to get a 2 percent accuracy boost. He said most of the models they ship are basically duct taped together with rules that would make a 2005 forum coder laugh. That hit different because I've been reading all these posts about AI replacing everyone, but here's a kid doing the boring grunt work admitting the emperor has no clothes. It made me wonder if we're celebrating the wrong thing, like a roofer bragging about a warranty while the shingles blow off in the first storm. Are any of you actually using AI tools at work that feel 10 years ahead, or is it mostly incremental tweaks sold as revolutions? Just curious if I'm missing something or if the hype is doing the heavy lifting.

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torres.mark16d ago

Did my buddy's company just spend six months for a chatbot that still can't answer basic questions?

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