Be More Cynical

How to think like a business reporter when evaluating software vendors

TL;DR: Assume the following unless proven otherwise:

This tool is built on outdated AI models using outdated prompting and other techniques. The system prompt and other settings are engineered to use cheaper-than-appropriate models with less-than-appropriate context. The output is tuned to appear incredibly useful even if it's not. It's almost certainly too long, uses inappropriately confident language, uses showy, flamboyant technical language that doesn't actually mean anything. The vendor is going to make it extremely hard for me to learn general AI principles because it's constantly going to push their own idiosyncratic language and ways of working. The tool has hard-coded and difficult-to-change ideas about how often to engage human users and how often to run genetic processes. This tool is designed to make it very hard for me to leave without leaving behind crucial company information and workflows.