Powered by AI, for Better and Worse
I am a big fan of AI. I have been using it since day one, and as soon as I could pay for it, I did. Today I use multiple tools, and they are very effective.
I would not want to work somewhere that bans AI tools.
At the same time, lately I notice more things breaking. Small things, annoying things. And the pile seems to be growing.
Some examples
I will not name products or companies, just random observations from my daily life over the last few weeks.
Mail client: subject field gone
A mail client suddenly stopped showing the subject field in the list view. Gone. Completely.
The developers said they had extensive tests and never saw anything like that. Fair enough, but it still slipped through. And we are talking about a popular platform here, not some unusual setup.
Big webshop: invoice printing problem
A shop I have used for years. One delivery, multiple vendors. At some point, printing a combined invoice for an order stopped working. Only one, the top listed invoice, could be printed.
It did not even feel worth reporting. These days, first contact is often an automated support loop anyway.
I recorded a screen video, because otherwise nobody would believe me.
Password manager: broken for weeks
A well-known password manager stopped working in a popular browser.
Several releases claimed to fix it. It stayed broken for weeks.
Broken support forum
At one point, users could only see their own posts.
The official message:
"Users can only see their own posts… we are working to restore visibility…"
And for me, the message appeared in Spanish.
En este momento, los usuarios de nuestra comunidad solo pueden ver sus propias publicaciones iniciando sesión y seleccionando su perfil en la barra de herramientas superior. Los moderadores continúan revisando y respondiendo todas las publicaciones. Estamos trabajando para restablecer la visibilidad de todas las publicaciones.
Not sure why I got a Spanish user interface.
I have never set any Spanish preferences anywhere.
Maybe some S-SE confusion?
And I could not even see my posts.
Notebook screensaver glitch
A popular notebook brand, external screen attached, dynamic refresh rates enabled. Suddenly the screensaver is no longer an animation.
Long threads with many user reports, several OS updates later, still no solution.
Summary
The list goes on. Of course, it is possible that none of this has anything to do with AI. These could just be normal regressions. Some might even be caused by attacks or external factors.
Still, I am fairly sure that at least some of it comes from teams using AI without yet having the right review habits around it.
That is not an argument against AI. Quite the opposite. AI is very good at speeding things up. But speed without review, testing, and ownership just moves problems faster.
The interesting part is that this can improve. The tools are good. What still needs to catch up in some places is how they are used.
Where this leads
I think this will correct itself, even if it will take a while. Teams will learn where AI helps most, and where stronger review is still needed. That is not new. New tools always come with a phase where people first optimize for speed, and only later get disciplined about quality again.
It reminds me a bit of the late 90s, when office tools spread through companies.
Suddenly many more people could build useful things on their own.
That created rough edges, but it also created a lot of value.
(Remember that shop that ran from an Excel sheet?)
Later, the better practices caught up. (Yes, not always and everywhere ;- )
My belief is that the teams who combine AI with solid engineering habits will come out ahead. And that is also why I stay optimistic. AI is a win, but not everyone knows how to use it well yet. And good engineering still matters. Using AI is part of engineering now. And like with programming languages, how people use it will make a huge difference.
Disclaimer
This post was written by a human. AI was only used for language polishing. And image generation.
