This month I want to highlight a video, Debunking Devin: “First AI Software Engineer” Upwork lie exposed!, by the Internet of Bugs YouTube channel. Devin was announced on March 12th, and was pitched as the world’s first fully autonomous AI software engineer. This video deconstructs a Devin demo and describes in meticulous detail how Devin did not accomplish the stated task, was ineffective in multiple ways, and is more hype than reality.

I have one disclaimer, and two key points:

1. (disclaimer) My goal is to curate high quality content to you, and provide a point of view from my personal experience. I watch every video and read every article that I recommend. Although the watch time is 25 minutes, this video is worth your time.
2. I like GenAI, and I also appreciate being realistic, rigorous, and precise. GenAI appears to suffer from alethophobia more than is typical for technical innovations.
3. I believe erroneous marketing hype ruins products and it negatively affects our business landscape. People hear the headlines and miss the details, and those details matter.

As technical leaders, it is our responsibility to sift through the noise and deliver strategic, simplified, well-reasoned thoughts that both push boundaries and are pragmatic. This video is great at debunking one specific GenAI claim, however there are a never-ending supply of partial truths to investigate. We need to stay skeptical and reflective as we embrace new technologies and paradigms.

“There are a lot people out there that see headlines, don’t read the article, that are not technical. And what these lies do is they cause non-technical people to believe that AI is far more capable than it is at the moment…People end up being a lot less skeptical of AI than they should be. They are a lot less skeptical of the output of AI than they really should be. And taking AI at face value these days is getting a lot of people in trouble.”

Bonus video – Big Tech Is Faking AI by Sasha Yanshin. This video demonstrates how AI marketing claims aren’t always aligned with reality. This video acts as a companion to the video above, providing more varied examples across GenAI where we are being misled.