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The illusion of simplicity: why the hype around AI resembles infobusiness

The current frenzy around AI, including “vibe coding” and workplace automation, is increasingly being compared to the phenomenon of “performative success.”…

AI-processed from Habr AI; edited by Hamidun News
The illusion of simplicity: why the hype around AI resembles infobusiness
Source: Habr AI. Collage: Hamidun News.
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# The Illusion of Simplicity: Why AI Hype Reminds Us of Info-Business

Looking at the current buzz surrounding artificial intelligence, you start noticing a pattern. Every day on social media, videos appear where a neural network creates a website, writes code, or replaces an entire design department in seconds. Companies promise a "carefree future" and complete work automation. But this sense of déjà vu is no accident — we've seen this scenario before. The wave of "successful success" worked exactly this way before the AI era swept the internet. Back then, people sold illusions; today they sell the same thing, just in different packaging.

The essence of the phenomenon is one: the industry focuses not on honest conversations about technology, but on marketing emotions. Instead of discussing the complexities and limitations of neural networks, the public is shown "best takes." It works like a casino — they show you a video of a happy player who won the jackpot, not statistics of thousands of losses. The real cost of attempts, the number of revisions, the need for human oversight and critical thinking disappear from the narrative. Only beautiful examples, successful results, and promises that everything will become even simpler tomorrow remain.

Let's look at how this works in practice. When a company demonstrates "AI that wrote an entire project" in hour-long videos, it's silent about the fact that in reality, this same AI can produce several non-working lines of code, outright nonsense in functionality descriptions, or glaring security vulnerabilities. No one shows the monotonous work of a developer who then spends three hours checking every line, fixing errors, and redoing half of it. The "vibe coding" that fascinates young specialists often turns out to be additional work, not its replacement. But this doesn't sell tickets, so they don't talk about it.

The same goes for workplace automation. At conferences, scenarios are demonstrated where neural networks completely replace humans in the office. Wonderful slides, enthusiastic audience, clicking camera shutters. But no one mentions that such automation requires enormous infrastructure investments, training models on clean data that often doesn't exist, and constant human oversight. No critical process in any real company is managed entirely by a neural network without people ready to intervene at any moment. But the story about "needing people for control" doesn't generate the same enthusiasm.

The danger of this approach is that it creates double alienation. On one hand, investors and managers, saturated with this marketing, make wrong decisions about implementing technologies in companies. On the other — ordinary people either panic about AI as complete human replacement or wildly overestimate its possibilities. Both reactions are based not on real understanding, but on artificially created narrative.

AI is indeed a powerful tool. But it's a complex tool that requires expertise, has serious limitations, and comes with significant implementation costs. Instead of honest conversation about this, the industry has chosen the path of slot machines — it shows rare wins, hides real numbers, and sells people the illusion of simplicity. A carefree future doesn't come automatically. It requires hard work, critical analysis, and rejection of beautiful fairy tales. But no one will promote such a story on social media.

ZK
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