Fact: AI is the next industrial revolution
Fact: AI cannot send an email
Note: This was originally posted on LinkedIn.
Fact: AI is the next industrial revolution. Fact: AI cannot send an email.
Last week I opened my mailbox to a soggy Amazon package. A gallon jug of white glue, whose cap fell off in delivery. Kids, slime, you get it.
After cleaning up I had Gemini draft an email to our property manager. It nailed the message. But then... it refused to send it in the Gmail app š§
So I manually copy-pasted between two apps (run by the same company).
š£ Takeaway: The bottleneck in AI right now isnāt intelligence. Itās plumbing. The model nails the hard stuff. The easy part breaks it.
If youāre confused by all this, your feeling is totally justified. Itās not just you.
On one hand, we hear hype. Revolutionary coding tools! Autonomous AI agents!
On the other:
- AI reads an email ā canāt create a calendar invite
- AI transcribes meeting notes ā canāt update project tracker
- AI ingests 300 pages of regulations ā canāt read my chat messages
AIās gains are not evenly distributed. The truth is, AI is *both* revolutionary and still immature for everyday work.
Most users canāt tell GPT from Gemini, let alone Claude Opus 4.5 to 4.6.
š£ But users *can* tell whether AI helps them with chats, files, calendars, emails and calls.
Yes, itās not all there yet. But the race is on, and itās getting better by the day.
Connect AI to where your work actually happens -- thatās real productivity. Low-hanging fruit, huge ROI.
Next time you try an AI, ask which services it connects to. AI plumbing is becoming the product itself.
Whatās one workflow where AI nails the thinking but canāt finish the last mile?
