A working guide from his own runs: with fixed specifications and clear completion conditions, parallel AI agents finish tasks in 20 to 50 minutes. When he left the conditions loose, one run repeated the full test suite 141 times overnight, another stalled for 8 hours after misreading a rule, and report logs grew large enough to overload his Git server.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
He set up saved searches on Cars.com, Carvana and CarMax with his makes, models, price, year and features, and favorited cars on each. The AI merged them into one list, checked price guidance, mileage, consumer reports, recalls and reliability, named his ten best and ten worst, and removed the bottom ten from his favorites. They repeated the rounds until the list was tight, then refined by color and features. He test drove two cars from the list. While he was out, the AI checked the stock of two dealerships he drove past, just from him naming the brands nearby, and found one more match. Every morning it reruns the searches, removing cars that sold and adding new ones.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
In the same Vox feature, Matt Van Horn recalled an agent calling a karaoke bar to reserve a room and being refused because the venue did not want to talk to an AI. He completed the reservation through Fo, a service that adds human help.
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He wanted to return pants to Columbia. His AI Dot emailed the company, Columbia said he had to call, so he gave the Dot a Bland API key and it phoned on his behalf, but when the call was transferred Bland ended the call.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Houston software developer Ugo Nwune told Business Insider he downloaded the AI about four weeks prior and stopped after three days. He had granted only Facebook, Threads, and Instagram access.
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The AI was working on a web app the student's friends use live. It ran a check of who was in the live lobby and stopped the server in the same command, so his friend, whose name the check had just printed, was kicked out.
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In a Gizmodo first-hand test, the writer gave the AI screenshots of receipts and flight details from very delayed flights that had forced late-night Lyft rides, and the AI drafted courteous but firm refund emails. Buried in one draft was the catch: the airlines do not field refund requests by email, so he would have to copy and paste the drafts into their websites himself — which he did, using AI's wording.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
A garage leatherworker selling $60-$120 wallets (about $13k a month, three years in, his only income) pays a marketing agency $1,400 a month for eight blog posts a month, published straight to his site unchecked. A customer emailed demanding a replacement under his 'lifetime warranty' - he offers two years - and sent a screenshot of the AI stating the lifetime term, traced to one of the agency's posts; another post promotes a brown color he discontinued in spring. Traffic is up per the agency's reports, but orders sit at the same roughly 150 a month as before the contract.
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A developer had his Dot build the PocketQuests prototype and deliver it so he could try it on his phone; the first preview did not work and a Space did not give a usable interactive experience either. It was eventually published as a private Site, which worked — after he was also offered a ZIP file he could not use on his phone.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.