I'm increasingly convinced AI just raises the commitment bar for startups - you really have to care about a problem to succeed at solving it AI makes implementation easier, but this creates a sea of slop on the competitive landscape. To actually differentiate, you need taste - but taste takes an immense cognitive load to develop, implement, and maintain Which means your cognitive load building anything is on maximum, all the time. Maximum cognitive load means you're going to be exhausted no matter what - I'm more exhausted today than I have ever been. If you don't care about the problem you're working on, this is going to be very painful. Pair that with it being very easy to create AI slop and on net harder to create something good (the bar for "good" has moved further than the ease of implementation), I call this the "AI product trough" - it's a murderous slog to get to something actually good now. You really have to want it.