Why AI Hasn’t Blown Our Minds…Yet

Hello. This is Dalton Post Michael and today we're gonna talk about why isn't AI knocking our socks off? Where's the AI revolution? Where's.

I was told Yeah. This is a revolutionary product and I saw that Google thing and demo was bad. And where's my surplus economy? Like, aren't we supposed to be in Star Trek world by now? Why do I have to still work? Like, what's going on, Dalton? Yeah. One funny thing about hype cycles is there's always going to be two sides of the debate.

Which is this thing is overhyped and this thing is underhyped. Yes. You don't get many clicks arguing this is exactly the right amount of hype. Subtly,.

perfectly hyped.

Yeah, this is perfect. So you always have like two sides of it. I think one of the AI is overhyped arguments is just the demos may be cool when you see the launch videos. But the products themselves are kind of crappy and not being deployed in production. They're not being deployed in ways that touch lots of consumers' lives. Can I try to say it a different way? Yeah.

I don't pick up my phone and use an AI product multiple times a day in the same way that, like, other products have adopted. Yeah. The perfect example of Google. Right? Just like Google search happened and I found myself using it without prompt. Yep. I haven't had that moment yet. I guess the argument that I would make on this is that.

the low hanging fruit use cases are going to be fixed first Yeah. And those are not likely to be the use cases that are the knock your socks off consumer, oh my god, I'm living in a futuristic dream I think the one I would talk about first that I think is happening already is the following. Have you ever tried to talk to Xfinity Comcast or Verizon Yeah. Wireless or United Airlines. United Airlines.

Yes. Those experiences are uniquely bad Yes. And known to be bad and are, you know. Just bad. Always. They're just bad. It's just bad. You go into them knowing it's gonna be bad and then somehow you're You're like, this this impressively bad.

And it seems like one of the first use cases that AI is being implemented is to improve customer support in various ways. Yes. We are already seeing a lot of this being deployed in real use cases. Yes. And what it's competing with is something that is so bad. Yeah. AI makes it better.

I think the other reason we're not hearing about this maybe as much as you would think is if you're actually deploying AI to these use cases, there's a few reasons you wouldn't want to beat your chest and be proud of it and talk about it, a few of which are just like people jobs, people are worried about their jobs. Also, don't want to get embarrassed like Google did of all this bad press.

They put something out and they got embarrassed because the the chatbot did embarrassing And so I think there's a lot of secret customer service AI things that are out there.

doing real stuff. Well, another thing with customer service, for most consumers, not a DAU thing. That's right. Like, hopefully, you're not calling customer service every day.

So you don't see it like you see other consumer products. And so I think it's already being deployed. I think it would be morbid deployed. I think it's gonna Revolutionize. Be good. It's gonna revolutionize things. And these are not small industries. Sometimes I'll talk to people and like, yeah, customer service.

Cool. What else? And I'll be like, wait, hold on. Yeah. This is a really big part of the GDP of the world is people that do customer service or try to interact in these service level jobs. This alone Yes. Hypothetically, if AI is a bust in a bunch of different ways, but it works extremely well fixing customer service, that's still profoundly going to change our world. Massive That's.

a great example. Obviously, if you're a developer, I would argue that you're having a different experience than the experience I described, between using AI products to help you code, using something like Copilot.

Yeah. Everyone uses Copilot, right? Like the the numbers that I've heard are crazy. Yes. What percentage of programmers use Copilot? And it's actually interesting to me because.

unlike Google where I would say that I saw developers and non developers kind of equally have overwhelming usage, there's actually a very clear divide. Whereas like developers can use something like ChatGPT way more often and generate way more value with it than.

normal consumers can. Yep. And so this is another area where, of course, making developers more productive would have profound impact Yeah. On the world. And again, it won't knock your socks off if you're a consumer out there. You'd be like, okay, you're boring me, Dalton and Michael. I don't care.

But if you're a programmer and you you now have this new tool you didn't have in the past that you're using every single day to do your job, that is profound.

Big deal. Big, big, big deal. And then, I mean, obviously, you know, Internet research. Right? Just the finding information. And this is one where I've seen it with my kid. Like, I realized, you know, as a grizzled 41 year old, I'm just like not actively seeking out information at the same rate that my six year old child is. Yes.

Like, you know, you have a young child that, you know, it's just like they can ask a question about everything once every ten seconds for their whole waking time. And products like this that can just answer every single question, like the best encyclopedia and dictionary that ever existed,.

Yeah. That's useful to a six year old. And, again, we have that. So I think people are already being decent to those. Like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever.

Cool. Like, I get it. But when is it gonna be really good? It's like, hey, this is already.

pretty useful. Yes. Pretty, pretty good. What's interesting is you see those use cases, and you still though have to acknowledge people have this feeling. And Yeah. Specifically I think the feeling that they have I've tried to unpack this in my own mind. I originally thought of it as smartphones. Right?

I originally thought of like, oh my god, my life changed with smartphones. But when I thought about it harder, it's actually gig economy. Mhmm. I actually believe that between sharing economy and gig economy, those are the two things that's happening. Yeah. And define gig economy for first. Yeah. Gig economy is your DoorDashes of the world, so food delivery, your Ubers of the world, cars.

Sharing economy, that's like Uber. Basically, the ability to.

touch something on a screen and something happens in the real world. Yeah. That's a good way to put it. Like, push a button, things happen. People show up. Yes. That's kinda that didn't exist before smartphones. No.

And, like, that is a super like, that is.

mind blowing. Like Yeah. And we don't see things like that yet with AI. But to your point, like, that doesn't mean the world's not rearranging because of AI. Like, could just be it's a thought experiment that it just does developer productivity.

It just does customer support, like all the things we just talked about. And that alone will have a profound impact on the world forever. Massive. Massive. I'm not saying that will happen. I'm saying there probably will be more wacky stuff that happens. Yes. But it's already changing things.

It just doesn't slap you in the face as some people might expect. And it's interesting because I think there's such revisionist.

history that even myself, right, like thinking, oh, smartphones was this moment. I remember when the first Apple phone came out, I didn't buy it. It it it wasn't this, like, amazing because there's no app store. There was no three g. Yeah. I didn't buy the first iPhone. No. It was it was kind of bad.

And so the idea that there are these like moments in time, I think like I've even been guilty of like, yeah, when you're summarizing history, it's easy to be like pre iPhone, post iPhone. When in reality, I don't even know if it was the iPhone I was experiencing. I feel like it was the gig economy I was experiencing.

It was the first time I took an Uber and I could finally get a taxi in San And to talk about Uber as an example and DoorDash Yeah. It took a really long time.

for that to grow across The US and the world Yes. And for it to be normalized where most people had downloaded and used those apps. Well That took years. And where do you want to start the start line? Do you want to start the start line with car phones?

Or you just wanna start it with like Palm Treo, like or BlackBerry Yeah. First g smartphones? Or do you wanna start it with first iPhone? Like It took a long long time. It wasn't like overnight everything changed. No. Right? No.

So we can see some cool things now, probably more cool things to come. But, yeah, like, I would argue, like, I agree with this sentiment. I'm not like I'm not shell shocked yet.

Yeah. I'm not either. I guess I haven't tried to talk to Comcast in a while. No. I I'm hoping it's better. I've removed Comcast in my life. That was my solution. But I think those are the places it's gonna show up Yeah.

Is things that are like unseen Yes. Behind the scenes and that are like already really bad.

And I think that this is an important point to leave with. You know, that's why we're excited to fund founders who are messing around with these new tools because these innovations don't happen in a second. And oftentimes, someone creates a base innovation and more founders, entrepreneurs have to do the rest of the work. Yep. And so so many of the use cases haven't been invented yet.

We gotta fund a lot of them to see what should change, you know? That's what's kind of fun about our jobs. So with that, great chat, though. Alright. Thanks.