Ask HN: Where are all the disruptive software that AI promised?

It may sound obtuse, but I'm genuinely curious. I understand that AI as an assistant can be empowering, but the way AI was sold to the masses was that it would replace everyone and everything.

It would allow small team to increase their velocity 10-fold. And I can see a glimpse of that here too where so many posts and comments share how much AI transformed one's life.

So my question is, if AI is such a game changing platform, where are the apps? I'm still using the same stuff as I did before, I don't see much disruption in any field. Am I just impatient?

9 points | by p-o 2 hours ago

6 comments

  • RationPhantoms 2 hours ago
    The signals are there but the usefulness/blast radius is being limited to "I'm not a software developer but I have this specific issue I need to write software to solve. I've done that and here is a Linkedin post explaining what it is and how I did it."

    I think we're looking at the wrong demographic/professional sector and throwing up our hands. You have to look at people who don't have as much professional experience with it because everyone you didn't write software in the 2010's is writing it now.

  • pmaroe 2 hours ago
    No, you're not! It's only a matter of attention. Today all eyes are on the LLM itself, but the big change is happening underground. I'm not a developer — I'm just a curious arborist who owns a company that prunes trees in Italy. In 4 months we have totally changed our company with the help of AI. AI, LLMs are just tools. It's the use that changes the output!
    [-]
    • fideli0 2 hours ago
      That sounds really interesting. Could you elaborate a bit more on how AI has helped you to fundamentally change your company?
  • olegmoca 2 hours ago
    Well, in software development is does increase the velocity 10x.
    [-]
    • p-o 2 hours ago
      It's undeniable that it has improved the productivity in _some_ areas of development. But my point stand nonetheless, if development is improved, it seems to be difficult to surface that to end user.

      The premise, originally, was that AI would empower workers to do more with less. Granted this is anecdotal, but most of the stuff I use today is much the same as it was 5 years ago. It seems the world is improving at the same rate as it did before, generally speaking.

  • kingkongjaffa 2 hours ago
    - I'm seeing lots of internal apps to help our customer success teams.

    - I'm seeing prototypes escape Figma and live as code for a faster/closer demo experience for product managers.

  • stochtinkerer 2 hours ago
    AI-native firms will be a game changer I think, the Black Swan event is approaching.
  • ath3nd 2 hours ago
    [dead]