It is extremely easy to find yourself drowning in AI buzzwords. Every post, every newscast, all over the radio—all you hear is AI, AI, AI.
This is understandable. We have been pursuing AI technology for over 50 years. Understanding how to actually build it was quite straightforward. Being able to develop the hardware to make it useful has only been accessible to humanity over the past 10 to 15 years.
Now, the general public is becoming aware of its uses and are fascinated by it. Microsoft’s CoPilot and ChatGPT have made AI accessible to millions of people.
However, the mass public’s fascination with AI is somewhat misguided. Many people are judging AI by its appearance rather than what it actually is. While this may not be a problem at the present moment, it certainly will be when everyone discovers its limitations.
A few weeks ago, ChatGPT-5 was released. Within 24 hours, YouTube and LinkedIn was flooded with people praising the “awestruck awesomeness” of this new model creation. Within seven days, all of a sudden, people’s attitudes towards the release began to sour. This is just an example of the hype cycle that we’re currently in. You are being blasted with AI talk for a handful of reasons, and I think it’s important that you understand what those are.
There’s a common assertion that most, if not all, white-collar jobs are about to be eliminated by AI. Because we now have an overgrown calculator which can produce an output which mimics written human language, everyone should just stop trying and go start a homestead.
This assertion is false for many reasons.
For one, AI cannot think—at all. It is simply a computer performing calculations to correctly predict the next few characters in a string. That’s it!
Now, it can do that very well.
But let’s, for a moment, consider what it can’t do very well.
It cannot read through your 418-page, $160 million contract and find those two small clauses which are going to cost you $10 million in profit if you don’t notice them.
It is not capable of creative thinking for marketing purposes. You can write a sales letter, but what AI model would have ever been able to come up with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Have you ever seen those four words together with the exception of that franchise? Neither has ChatGPT-X.
It is certainly not capable of training itself. Few people in this space are thinking about the AI model collapse or the issues we’re about to have because we’ve run out of data to train these models upon.
I know that sounds a bit negative. And there is certainly a whole host of things that AI can do extremely well. But, AI will not fundamentally change our reality to the point that work will no longer be required.
First, you need to get educated on what AI is actually capable of and how it works. There’s about to be a lot of snake oil salesmen that are going to come onto the scene in this industry. The only way to guard yourself from them is to have the correct knowledge and expertise in this domain.
Second, you shouldn’t adopt technology simply for the sake of adopting technology. Only add technologies to your existing business structure which are right for you and your company.
You should stay up to date on the latest AI developments. If you see something that looks promising to your business, you should investigate it promptly. However, you should always be somewhat skeptical of larger-than-life claims.
Remember what your mother said.
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is—even in the AI world.
Jonathan Adams
August 18th, 2025