Everyone has AI. Few know what to do with it.

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Let’s start with a truism. Late spring is conference breeding season. Hundreds of events come into the world, each one larger than the last, each one filled to the brim with “breakthroughs.” The word “innovation” gets worn out completely. Afterward, you can only use it to polish doorknobs in the marketing department.

This year was no different. I was invited to speak at one of these events. I will spare you the name. I wanted to decline, but it is difficult to say no when someone offers you a microphone, a spotlight, and a bottle of premium still water.

My topic? Artificial intelligence in manufacturing. Or, as we say among ourselves, AI that knows when to cut the sheet metal and when not to.

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Before I went on stage, I listened to several other speakers. And I felt something that is hard to describe. Somewhere between fascination and claustrophobia. A bit like walking into an electronics store where every fridge greets you by name.

Because now, everyone has their own AI.

One man talked about a forklift with machine learning. Another about a robotic arm that can recognize when an operator is sad. A third described an AI that knows when a worker is on a coffee break and starts welding things on its own to pass the time.

All of it was, as the speakers kept saying, cool. That word was repeated more often than commas in a Churchill speech.

So I sat there, absorbing all the coolness like a sponge. Until something started to itch. Not in my throat. In my head. Because while everyone had AI, no one had any examples of it actually being used.

Zero real-world applications. Zero proof of how it works in a factory. Just theories, slides, renderings, and an unwavering belief in a revolution that is supposedly already happening.

It felt a bit like kids on a playground saying things like my dad has a lightsaber. And another one says mine has two and also the Iron Man suit.

The difference is that kids like these do not organize tech conferences.

That was the moment I had a thought. The kind you get when you hear Last Christmas in a shopping mall for the fifteenth time. Maybe we are the ones inflating this AI bubble. Maybe it is not about what works, but about what sounds good in a slide deck.

I started wondering where we really are with artificial intelligence. Are we in a new golden era of progress? Or are we just cosplaying the future with cardboard helmets and fancy job titles?

I do believe AI has potential. It might change the way we produce things, the way we check quality, and maybe even how we find parking spots in city centers. But before we get there, we might want to plant our feet firmly on the ground.

I am not saying we should stop being impressed. Wonder is valuable. But let it be real. Let it come from experience, not from a PowerPoint template with a quote from Elon Musk in italics.

For instance, in my talk I shared a real story. We used AI in quality control for welding. The system can tell good welds from bad ones with more accuracy than a person. It never takes vacation. It does not get hungover after the company party.

There was no applause. No shouts of amazement. But someone walked up to me and asked a simple question. Does it actually work?

That, I thought, is the question we should be asking more often.

Because in the end, it is not about having AI. It is about using it for something useful.

And if we cannot do that just yet, we still have people. People with natural intelligence. The kind that history has shown can also do incredible things.

Especially when it does not try too hard to be cool.