> In my experience, when people promote AI, its sold as just having a regular conversation and then the AI does thing.

This is almost the complete opposite of my experience. I hear expressions about improvements and optimism for the future, but almost all of the discussion from active people productivly using AI is about identifying the limits and seeing what benefits you can find within those limits.

They are not useless and they are also not a panacea. It feels like a lot of people consider those the only available options.