Intro·1 min
Hype vs. Reality
What AI is actually good at today, what it's bad at, and how to tell the difference when you're being pitched.
If you read tech headlines, AI is either going to cure cancer next Tuesday or take over the planet by Friday. Out in the world where small businesses actually live, neither is true. The reality is narrower, more useful, and easier to plan around.
What’s real today
- Drafting and editing text. Emails, proposals, ad copy, job posts — first drafts in seconds.
- Summarizing and extracting. Long PDFs, contracts, meeting transcripts → the parts that matter.
- Question-answering over your own documents. Pointed at your handbook, SOPs, or sales history, AI can answer staff questions without you in the loop.
- Repetitive judgment-light work. Sorting tickets, tagging emails, classifying inbound leads.
- Code, content, and design assistance. Faster, not zero-touch.
That list alone is worth real money to a small office.
What’s still hype
- “Autonomous” anything. Demos look great. Production deployments without human oversight fail in ways that hurt customers.
- “AI knows your business.” It doesn’t, until you feed it your business. That’s what later modules cover.
- Replace your accountant / lawyer / doctor. It’ll confidently invent the wrong answer and you’ll never know.
- “Set it and forget it” marketing tools. They generate slop at scale. Slop loses customers.
A quick filter for any AI pitch
When a vendor or consultant pitches you, ask three things:
- Where does the human stay in the loop? No answer = walk away.
- What happens when it’s wrong? If they pretend it won’t be, walk faster.
- What data does it need, and where does that data go? If they get vague, that’s your answer.
The hype will keep going. The reality is that this is a powerful tool with sharp edges. You don’t have to outrun the hype — you just have to use the tool soberly. That’s the whole point of the rest of this course.