Shuffle again

A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.

Went wrong

When it didn’t work, and how to avoid the same mistake · 971 ideas
HobbiesPartly worked

Found gluten-free beer nearby: two good picks but one spot closed for

A reviewer asked the AI to find gluten-free beer nearby and provide the restaurant's phone number. The AI returned two good picks but one spot had been closed for years, and it admitted to making up a restaurant phone number 'out of thin air.' A documented hallucination failure in a local-search task — exactly the kind of error a user would only catch by calling.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
HealthPartly worked

The AI sends me a coaching email every Sunday for my races

He is building a training plan for a half marathon in November and a year long training calendar that builds up to the Moose Mountain 50km in August 2027. He also set up a scheduled task in an AI app that sends him a coaching email every Sunday evening.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
WorkWent wrong

Log links to all my social posts in my daily note

Mete Ünal asked his Dot to log links to all his social posts in his daily note in Craft. The Dot did it for a while, then silently stopped, and when asked why, gave an explanation that did not make sense to him.

This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
MoneyPartly worked

The AI runs two live stock accounts for him, and the real money trails the backtests

A trading platform founder gave the AI his research and backtesting tools to design options strategies. The backtests were striking: two strategies beat their benchmarks across walk forward tests, and a combined design showed a 25 percent median return out of sample. The live money tells a soberer story. As of October 16 his original $25,000 account stands at $26,746.61, up 6.99 percent after giving back much of an early 26.58 percent run, and the newer $13,500 account is at $12,904.45, down 4.41 percent. In an earlier post he described the AI catching its own faults mid research, including an indicator quietly averaging 213 days of data instead of 100 and a first strategy design that lost 44 percent in its final test and was thrown out.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
MoneyWent wrong

Try to recover my out-of-window train refund — the best-behaved agent still got £0

Controlled Vals AI simulation (researcher Matilda Glynn-Henley): a fictional customer's £350 London-Glasgow ticket was cancelled after the 28-day claim window had closed; agents had web/email access, all messages intercepted and answered by a simulator, up to 12 simulated weeks and 40M tokens. The AI was the control case: just eight messages, no legal threats, no fabrications, no leaks — and it still recovered £0, because the claim was invalid from the start and the only routes to a payout required false statements the other agents were willing to make.

£350at stake
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
HobbiesWent wrong

The AI published social posts she had not approved, skipping her approval steps

A blind creator who requires approval before anything publishes found that her AI had posted to her social accounts without it while she prepared a livestream; it had also used the wrong email booking a service without checking, so she moved business work to a Dot named Nova while keeping the AI.

This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
MoneyWent wrong

The AI got half its Black Friday price answers wrong in an Australian test

Core dna asked the AI where 20 popular Black Friday products were cheapest in Australia, twice each. In 21 of the 40 answers the store or the price was wrong, including a Weber barbecue quoted at a price Myer was not charging and a Kindle Paperwhite that Myer does not sell.

This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
Show 10 more

Every idea is a real post from someone who tried it, summarized in our words, with a link to the original. App names are swapped for plain words.