**Real Talk on Artificial Intelligence**

Ever since ChatGPT splashed onto the Internet in late 2022 nothing has ever been the same - AI-generated memes from Midjourney, GitHub CoPilot, Cursor, and ham-fisted bespoke AI agents have been shoved into every application we use including our phones, desktops, and even our cars.

Most of it absolutely, positively, demonstrably sucks - and therein lies the problem: the state of AI, as it's accessible to real end-users, is several thousand lightyears from the reality portrayed by AI evangelists online.

"If you're not dropping everything and doing AI right now, you're going to be left behind - by the way, make sure you buy my course on doing AI development!"

How much of this should you be paying attention to? The answer is in this talk - we'll talk turkey about the state of AI, its real potential, and why most of that isn't remotely close to what's being portrayed by its public evangelists right now.

First time this talk has been offered - and it's aimed at technical folks who are wondering "to what extent should I be paying attention to AI?"