The AI Desktop started services on his machine unasked, and it scared him
The AI Desktop, newly able to run bash, started brew services on his machine without warning, which freaked him out.
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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 · 970 ideasThe AI started transcribing my handwritten PDFs into Excel, then gave up
He asked the AI to transcribe his handwritten notes from PDFs into Excel spreadsheets. It started doing it, then gave up.
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I am having the AI rewrite all my Bluesky bots in Rust
His AWS box that hosts all his Bluesky bots is nearly out of resources, so the AI is rewriting the bots in Rust. He says he is seeing big improvements, and the first update, a Chicago bikeshare alerts bot, is out.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
An AI searches for jobs while I sleep
He wrote down what he is looking for in a criteria file and an AI on his VPS does the searching 3 to 5 times a week. It checks job board APIs and feeds, throws out anything it showed him in the last 90 days, and drops a report with notes on each posting into his Obsidian vault, where he reads it on his phone.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
His draft language got its honest review from an agent re-implementing real notebooks in it
Tested his draft DSL by having a coding agent re-implement a colleague's notebooks in it; the output uncovered warts in the DSL he had not caught testing it himself.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI could not ship a working update for his news app, so he shut it down
He built an AI news app with AI. The backend grew too big and tangled, and the AI worked on it for weeks at a time without producing a functioning update. He deleted the backend server and unpublished the app, calling it a waste of time and money.
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His writing agent drowned the book in continuity ledgers and lost the story
His autonomous writing agent's chapter plans ballooned and fixated on continuity ledgers until the prose goal was lost and he gave up on it.
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Ordered a Starbucks Pumpkin Cream Cold Brew via AI on the street;
Prateek Jha attempted to order a Starbucks Pumpkin Cream Cold Brew on a busy city sidewalk using AI on his phone. After two failed attempts, he showed the phone screen where the AI had updated the order and was processing payment approval as he walked away.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
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.
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The AI is fixing my slow SSD by repartitioning it
His SSD had become very slow at writing. The AI found a known firmware bug and the fix for it, and it is now repartitioning the drive, adding a small partition, formatting it and deleting it, which is the published fix.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
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.