Tag: business

AI in the Real World: Beyond the Hype

AI is delivering real-world value across industries, from healthcare to finance and education. The most impactful AI applications solve specific problems, often with 10X-100X improvements over traditional methods.

Key points:

  • AI is delivering real-world value across industries, from healthcare to finance and education.
  • While large corporations may be scaling back pilots (‘Welcome to the AI trough of disillusionment’), startups and smaller businesses are driving rapid adoption.
  • The most impactful AI applications solve specific problems, often with 10X or even 100X improvements over traditional methods.

AI Use Cases: Solving Real Problems

AI is already transforming how we work, learn, and interact. Here are some of the most compelling examples:

Finance & Business

  • Cleo – Acts as a personal financial advisor, helping users manage money smarter.
  • Rocketable – Buys businesses and automates them using AI – this is the ultimate technology Private Equity firm.
  • Trilogy – Buys businesses and streamlines the operations with AI and global talent.
  • John Rush – runs 24 startups in parallel.
  • PS4 Capital – Professional Services firm shifts from billable hours to output, as AI slashes time spent on tasks.
  • Multiply – Allows financial advisors to make expert guidance accessible to more people.
  • Consulting – Consultants using ‘shadow’ AI to do their work.

Healthcare

  • AI vs. Doctors – In a surprising study, LLMs by themselves outperform doctors in diagnostics—and even doctors using AI.
  • CT Scan Analysis – AI reviews scans for multiple diseases, not just heart disease, improving early detection.

Education & Productivity

  • Khan Academy’s AI Tutor – A personal tutor that sees what you can see and talks to you.
  • Nigeria School – Students achieved a year’s worth of learning in just 6 weeks with AI-driven instruction.
  • 2-Hour Learning – AI condenses a full day’s learning into 2 hours, so students can spend the extra time on soft skills.
  • Readwise Reader – Read an entire magazine in a few minutes with automatic AI summaries of each article.

Work & Recruitment

  • Crossover – AI conducts full interviews and assessments, making the process faster but also more transparent, objective and straightforward.
  • Swooped – Automates job searches, generating personalized CVs and applications in minutes.
  • Bond – An AI Chief of Staff that eliminates hours of meetings by providing managers with real-time updates.

Creativity & Development

  • SWE Lancer – Claude earned $400K worth of software projects in Upwork.
  • Y Combinator Startups – for a quarter of the most recent YC batch 95% of the code is written by AI.
  • Characters with Voice – Character.ai allows users to speak to anyone with their own voice (so you can talk to Warren Buffet about your financial goals)

Media & Local News

What’s Next?

The real story isn’t about flashy demos or corporate press releases  – it’s about AI solving tangible problems in a way that couldn’t have been done before. While there are lots of discussions going on about the technology, 1) people are busy building and reshaping industries one use case at a time, and 2) the technology keeps getting better and cheaper.

The key? Focus on real adoption, not hype. Just as software did, AI is now eating the world – this is how everything will be done in the future.