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F5 · Business / Advisory

Evaluating AI hype vs. reality

builds on:F3C2(soft - not required)
Layer 0Plain English · 60 sec

AI news and pitches are full of overclaiming - "we built our own AI," "fully autonomous agent," "proprietary model" often actually mean "we prompted GPT-4 well" or "we automated 3 steps in n8n." Being able to translate marketing language back into the real underlying mechanism is the core skill of advisory-level literacy.

Layer 1How it actually works

A useful mental checklist when evaluating any AI claim: What model is actually underneath this (D1)? Is this really fine-tuned or just well-prompted (C2)? Is "agent" here doing multi-step autonomous work, or is it a single chatbot call (E1)? Has this been tested beyond a demo (F3)? Running any pitch through these five questions cuts through most hype fast.

Layer 2Try it / see it

Pick one AI product or startup pitch you've seen recently (Realla.AI's own materials are a good real example) and run it through the checklist above - write down your honest guess at what's actually happening underneath, then see if you can find out how close you were.

Quick check

What's the fastest way to cut through an AI hype claim?

see also:A6