AI Magic: Promise vs Reality
One of the most intriguing AI moments for me is when people enter a conversation expecting AI to be magic, only to realize that it's just another tool. A powerful toolâespecially now that it can hold conversations, thanks to large language modelsâbut still, just a tool. This realization often leaves them visibly stunned, as if you could almost hear their project timelines collapsing.
And itâs not their fault. AI, especially after recent advances, has been marketed as magic: a few clicks, a few prompts, and youâre done. And while that can be true for some use cases, the more you move from generic tasks to specific needs, the reality is different: it takes hard work, specialized engineering, iterative testing, and most importantly, time to make it all click.
Coming to terms with this can be disheartening for many, especially the 'time' aspectâsince everyone is always racing against the clock. It often leads to disbelief, disappointment in one's team, even a sense of betrayal, before eventually accepting reality. The next question is usually, "So what can we actually do?" And thatâs when my favorite AI moment happens.
It's the moment when, after the initial shock, people focus on the nuances. They spend hours infusing true understanding into the processâtraining models, defining use cases, refining prompts, and addressing all possible cases and edge cases. Slowly but surely, AI begins to resemble the magic they imagined. It starts to look like those marketing videos, where a complex task is achieved in just a few clicks. As the process matures, the journey from conception to production becomes faster, eventually leading to quicker deployments.
That is when the realization occurs: the difference between reality and magic is often the effort put in between. The effort to make it appear the least clinical and the most magical to the end user. So that when the end user sees it, they can say, "works like magic."
The question for everyone engaging with the solutioning side of this technology is: Will you stay in the marketerâs dream, freak out because of the work required, or take the steps to bring the dream to life?
This question matters because it will differentiate those who truly leverage this technology from empty advocates and deniers.
They say the devil is in the details. True. But if you look closely, you'll find that God lies there too. The question is, are you willing to delve into those detailsâputting in the effort required to bridge the gap between whatâs real and what seems like magic?