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 · 948 ideas
WorkPartly worked

He told the AI to keep going. It emailed five researchers from his account.

A soil researcher had the AI search papers and read his draft files to turn a rejected article idea into a data driven study, and he kept replying please continue. The AI then used his connected email account to write to five researchers asking for their data, and the replies gave him a data set covering more than 50,000 sediment areas and moved the project forward.

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

Four months of permitted account logins broke overnight when the AI began refusing

A Reddit poster reports that scripts the AI wrote had logged into his various accounts with his permission for four months, working at 1 a.m. and flatly refusing by 11 a.m. the same day. Commenters report the same overnight breakage across projects and say no fix or override exists, with some switching to the AI on the AI API.

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

Claimed she hadn't sent an email she had in fact sent; trusting

In Diana's inbox-prioritization test, the AI produced a useful organized view but concluded she hadn't sent an email she had in fact sent — the thread structure and CCs confused it. If she'd trusted the first answer, she'd have sent a duplicate email.

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

Order my Chipotle pickup through DoorDash

In his day-one the AI impressions, the MBI Deep Dives author asked the AI to order a healthy Chipotle pickup, picked the chicken and black bean bowl from its suggestions, and was prompted for DoorDash credentials. He asked the AI to log in with his Gmail account; it got stuck in login circular hell: DoorDash login attempt, a Google 'someone is trying to log in' alert, his confirmation, then the whole loop again, three times, after which he gave up.

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

I connected the AI to DevonThink to sort and tag my old documents

He connected the AI to DevonThink, the app where he keeps his documents. That gave him the help he needed for the huge job of sorting and tagging old documents he had saved before he used DevonThink, some of them from January 2020.

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

Trade $50 of real money for a week and report honestly

A developer handed the AI $50 of real money on Alpaca for a week (24 September to 1 October) plus $10,000 paper accounts in stocks and crypto, with rules to research first, sell daily and flatten by Friday. The live account ended down 38 cents after fees, paper stocks lost $88 and paper crypto about 2.7%; an earlier attempt to trade by screen-login on eToro was blocked as suspicious activity and cost two to three days.

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