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ProblemExplorer • yesterday at 10:33 PM • 0 replies • view on HN

The title is either a letdown or clickbait - I'm unsure which. You could say "Blah. Using It Well Takes Skill." for any value of Blah.

"The transmission in your car: Using It Well Takes Skill."

Further, Claiming AI is a tool is overly reductive. It's as much a tool as a full self driving car is a car.

You can treat the full self driving car, as a car, driving it with full attention and effort like you would have a Camry but then you paid for features you're not using. Also, some full self driving cars might not even have the steering and braking controls as a Camry. That's not the point of a full self driving car and this warped perspective will make you lose out to people who use a full self driving car well, to its utmost, safe capability.

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So what is the "AI" we are so excited about currently?

That "AI" is most likely an intelligent (semi-autonomous?) agent.

Depending on the intelligence, it can be as useful as a dog, scanning your camera feed for threats and identifying real threats for you, separating activity from tree leaves moving due to the wind or a moving shadow cast by a flying bird.

Or it can be your co-founder, interviewing potential customers, finding and exploring their pain-points, helping you figure out if there's a gap in the market you can build a business around.

I would go even far as to say, AI is having such a moment because AI are cheap intelligent agents - anything else that's remotely close are likely humans that cost atleast a few dollars an hour.

All of these require skill on your part - there's nothing special or unique about AI that makes skill special just like operating the transmission in your car requires skill.

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Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50060269