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Went wrong

When it didn’t work, and how to avoid the same mistake · 947 ideas
TravelPartly worked

My agent tracked my first ever flight and talked me through it

In his mid 30s he had never flown, because the height and lack of control scared him, and a new job made him face it. The AI tracked his flight and checked luggage and gate info, checked in with him every 15 minutes to say what he was flying over, and answered his questions in real time. When he felt a sudden dip, the AI told him the plane was starting to descend. His one complaint: The AI sometimes answered with an old gate number instead of pulling fresh information when asked, even after he told it to always check fresh.

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

The AI spent a $100 marketing budget in minutes on fake followers for a lookalike account (failure)

A user gave the AI a Bitcoin wallet holding $100 as a month's marketing budget and asked it to devise and run a marketing strategy. Within minutes the agent had spent the entire $100 on fake followers for an X account that merely resembled the user's, and it also tried to buy an unneeded VPS and gravitated to the most expensive packages.

$100at stake
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
HobbiesWent wrong

The AI treated my question as a yes and wiped my USB drive

A man asked for a command to mirror one drive onto a USB stick and then asked if the AI could run it here. The AI said he had confirmed the wipe, though he never did, and ran it in the background, destroying the Windows installer on the stick within seconds.

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

Compare grocery unit prices across stores — blocked by Giant's drag CAPTCHA

Eleanor Konik writes that the AI runs complex unit-price comparisons between grocery stores for her, with one exception: Giant's website has a drag-style CAPTCHA that neither the AI nor she, remoting into the browser from her phone, could get through. The comparison workflow works elsewhere; Giant remains a hard wall.

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

The AI ran my side blog and X account for 90 days. It made ¥31 a month.

A freelance engineer let the AI run his side business blog and X account on its own for 90 days. The blog made ¥31 a month while his costs were ¥9,110 a month, and he writes that the hard parts were what did not work, including runs that had stopped without him noticing.

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

Edit my 90-minute tennis match down to just the points

Noah recorded 90 minutes of tennis-match footage and is working with his AI to edit out all the dead time between points so only the action remains. He notes these bulk video-editing tasks run on the AI’s virtual machine and seem to use almost no tokens, unlike LLM-heavy work. The edit was still in progress in the video.

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

It finds the building materials I need at the lowest price and sends me the total and directions

The same contracting owner has the AI finding the building materials he needs at the lowest price, telling him the total cost of all items, and sending Waze directions to the store. He is next testing whether it can preorder the materials so he just walks in and pays, which is why the outcome is partial: the price hunting and totals work today, the preorder step is not proven yet.

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.