From massive investments to AI-powered hiring and building websites, is the technology living up to the hype?

AI is making headlines for its billion-dollar investments, but what happens when we put it to work on real business problems?

Coming to you from Calgary, Alberta, this episode of Hardly Artificial takes a closer look at the growing financial pressures behind the AI boom. From Anthropic's reported IPO plans and infrastructure commitments to Google's massive AI spending, we explore the numbers behind the headlines and ask whether the industry's biggest players can sustain their rapid growth.

But beyond the market hype, what does successful AI adoption actually look like? We share a firsthand experiment using ChatGPT to automate part of the hiring process, reviewing hundreds of resumes, evaluating qualifications, and organizing candidates in monday.com. We also explore the risks of bias in AI-assisted decision-making and how standardized scoring systems could help businesses make more informed choices.

Then things get a little strange. We discuss an Amazon sleep-tracking alarm clock that raises questions about privacy, discover an AI-powered robotic duck, and put Replit to the test in another round of Prompt Roulette.

With just a simple prompt, we challenge AI to build a functioning MicroDuck reseller website from scratch. Can it really create and publish a website in minutes, without writing a single line of code ourselves? microduck-marketplace.replit.app

From billion-dollar investments to everyday automation, the real value of AI may be less about the hype and more about what we can actually accomplish with it.

Chapters:

• 00:00 – Welcome to Episode 7: Live from Calgary
• 01:00 – What's Coming Up: AI Investments, Hiring & Replit
• 04:16 – Anthropic's Financial Risks and IPO Plans
• 06:37 – Would You Invest in Anthropic?
• 08:59 – Are All AI Models Fundamentally the Same?
• 11:27 – What Makes One AI Model Better Than Another?
• 13:49 – Could Anthropic's Valuation Be at Risk?
• 14:30 – Google's AI Spending and Quarterly Earnings
• 16:01 – Is Big Tech Too Big to Fail?
• 17:00 – Using AI to Analyze Investment Portfolios
• 18:22 – Are We Heading Toward an AI Bubble?
• 19:15 – How AI Search Is Changing Website Traffic
• 20:46 – Why Businesses Are Struggling to Adopt AI
• 23:07 – Automating the Hiring Process with ChatGPT
• 25:10 – Screening Resumes with AI and monday.com
• 27:32 – Can AI Hiring Tools Introduce Bias?
• 29:40 – How AI Scores and Evaluates Candidates
• 32:01 – Using AI to Make Fairer Decisions
• 34:25 – Amazon's Creepy Sleep-Tracking Alarm Clock
• 36:49 – Smart Devices, Sleep Data & Privacy Concerns
• 39:07 – Meet MicroDuck: The AI-Powered Robot
• 41:30 – Prompt Roulette: Building a Website with Replit
• 43:11 – Creating a MicroDuck Storefront from One Prompt
• 45:33 – Watching Replit Build the Website
• 47:57 – The AI-Generated Website Takes Shape
• 50:22 – Publishing the Website and Exploring Replit's Tools
• 52:39 – The MicroDuck Website Goes Live
• 53:30 – Final Thoughts & What's Next