The Disillusionment Of Entrepreneurial Dreams

Entrepreneurs are excited about AI and exploring the possibilities. They are signing up for free trials, playing around, and seeing how they can save time and money with the various tools now available.

After they have fallen for the fancy squeeze pages, believed the testimonials, and had their mind blown by possibility, the bar has been set very high. They expect that each tool will revolutionize their business. They believe that with just a few clicks, they will have client-ready headlines, images and articles, a mountain of content they would be proud to put their name to and a clear path for outproducing all of their competitors.

Then reality hits, and those lofty expectations come crashing down.

How did it all start?

When ChatGPT was released in November of 2022, it opened the eyes of entrepreneurs across the globe. The technology had seemingly come so far, they could now see how AI could directly affect their business. With this first phase came shock, awe, and then excitement. The promise was huge, and they couldn’t wait to start.

This newfound accessibility created increased levels of experimentation. Not only were entrepreneurs testing out the tools, they were building them. By spring 2023 there were platforms for every requirement, as opportunists, developers and creators pivoted fast and sought to grab land.

AI masterminds popped up, the conversations filled LinkedIn and Reddit, and downloads, seminars and courses became available in droves. Before long, artificial intelligence was the latest shiny object.

But what makes it so appealing? Why are we all so keen to explore it further, and is it living up to its promise?

The promise of artificial intelligence

Upon first glance, the promise of artificial intelligence is huge. “I could use all of these tools to run my business processes,” thinks the entrepreneur who sees its potential. Hearing case studies of what AI has done for their peers, they look for tools to carry out everything they do, to save time and make more money with less effort.

The promise of AI is that gains can be made across all areas of business, whether that’s replacing team members, improving the quality of output or simply producing more.

When considering a leaner and more profitable business, you can understand the allure of this AI realm. When running your company feels like a struggle and you’re working all hours, why wouldn’t you be looking to reap the benefits promised by artificially intelligent assistance?

The disillusionment of AI

In actual fact, the truth is wildly different from the expectation. Businesses hoping to use the tools in their day-to-day are having a shock when they aren’t nearly as good as they thought they would be. Rather than hitting a few keys and having reams of publishable content, flawless imagery and perfectly realistic recordings, obtaining quality output takes work. Work they weren’t sure they signed up to do.

Entrepreneurs using AI are discovering that additional time and effort is required to overcome its current limitations. Content written by Chat GPT and other language tools often requires a great deal of editing, so much so, it might have been faster to write it from scratch. It’s not just copy; AI-generated images still need photoshopping, and facts have to be fact-checked with additional research.

For every action there’s a reaction. The reactions include worry about Google penalties, coasting team members, false information appearing in articles, and questions around intellectual property and plagiarism that no one knows how to answer. The opening belief that, “I’m going to be able to do more with less money and time” feels like it’s slipping away with every experiment.

At some point, the frustrated business owner will declare AI bankruptcy. They will give up trying, cancel their subscriptions and deem it all a fad. Having wasted hours and been disappointed several times, they go back to the manual way they were doing things before.

What’s in the expectation gap?

The hype surrounding what AI can do for business creates unrealistic expectations for business owners. The tools they are testing do a good job of selling the dream, but can actually create living nightmares. The squeeze pages and glowing testimonials demonstrate best case scenarios, of expertly programmed uses, and achieving those results doesn’t happen on first go. Prospective users are being sold on the gold standard of what these platforms can do.

The truth is somewhere in the middle. The AI tool likely can do everything it promises, but only when properly prompted by people who know what they’re doing.

After hype, inexperience is the second element of the expectation gap. Most entrepreneurs don’t understand how to harness AI to achieve the results they are after. They don’t know how to use prompts effectively; they don’t know how to feed the machines. They aren’t prepared to put in the hours required to produce client-ready results because they want those quick wins they believe they are owed.

Imagine a court case between a business owner and Chat GPT to decide who was to blame for a poorly written article. The business owner would say the AI did a shoddy job. Chat GPT would say it created the best it could from the inputs it was given. Garbage in, garbage out, as the saying goes. Poor prompts lead to questionable results and it’s rarely the sole fault of the engine.

The final factor in the expectation gap is time. With time, business owners become better at feeding models and controlling what they produce. With time, they learn from mistakes and improve. You wouldn’t bring home a puppy and send it back when it didn’t immediately roll over on request, you’d expect its training to take a while and you’d persevere with the practice. Think of this in the same way.

What’s going to happen with AI?

Artificial intelligence is only going to get better. Every update of every tool comes with improvements that are passed onto users. Business owners get more familiar with how to use the technology; we become better robot trainers. We conceptualize differently, to work in harmony alongside AI, we start to think in terms of prompts, and we understand the cause and effect on new levels. The gap between expectation and reality narrows now we know what’s required of us.

Before this happens, many people will have given up. Having wasted time and money and been stung, they develop a case of AI scepticism and turn a blind eye to advancements. They believe every new thing will be the same as the last, a load of hype followed by huge disappointment. They miss out on the benefits because they didn’t have patience with what lay before them.

In business and in AI, those that play the long game reign victorious. The big results don’t come to the people who dip their toe in the water for the quick wins, they come to the people who demonstrate endurance. Those who get stuck in, remain curious, learn all there is to learn and commit to testing, iterating and advancing with the tech will be streets ahead in a matter of weeks.

If that sounds like you, keep going. The more you practice, the better your results will be. The more you tinker with tools the better you learn how to turn inputs into outputs. When everyone else has given up, you’ll be there, building your foundations, and making those incremental gains that compound in a big way.