AI - What is Real and What is Hype?

AI is pretty amazing. 

The hype? That’s even more incredible - and often misleading.

The Burrow project started in July 2025 to separate hype from reality and explore the practical use of AI to build products and businesses. This is a shifting landscape, and the blog will track the evolution. The revolution will be blogged.

This Blog’s Purpose

Think of this blog as an A-Team / MythBusters mashup that will track the creation of a product using AI. The intent is not to create an actual, commercially viable product (wouldn’t that be grand), but to focus on the process and what is possible with AI. Some of the blog topics will include:

• An understanding of AI tools that are available, how they can be used, what they are good at, and what they fail at.
• How an AI-centric team works: collaboration, roles, and the distribution of tasks.
• Oopsies along the path to AI, and what was learned.
• The evolution of AI tools over time and where the shifting boundaries lie at any given time.
• Practical advice on using AI, grounded in reality, not hype.

The big, big bonus for the Burrow team is that this will help us stay abreast of the state of technology while having something fun to work on over the weekends!

The Motivation

In early 2025, I was pretty heads down on a variety of other things as AI started heating up. I heard all the buzz, but I had things to do.

The buzz got louder, and I started hearing fantastical claims about what was possible and what was coming soon. I was dubious. All of the hoopla sounded so much like the dot-com days, and phrases like “this time it’s different” and “it’s the emergence of a new economy” were again in the air. 

The tipping point came when I heard that enterprise-level software could be built in weeks with only modest developer involvement, and everything under the sun was possible. Name a feature, and the answer would be “yes.” What’s more, ask for a feature, and it would be done within a few minutes.  

As a former software developer, that sounded scary and dangerous. However, I realized I was not in a position to dispute these claims. I realized I had not kept up with AI’s progress enough to comment one way or the other. My reaction was a quick 'nu-uh'—a classic Luddite's response. My opinion, I realized, was not informed. 

I needed to educate myself so I could BE INFORMED and know when a claim was valid and when to call bullshit.

But… what was the best way to do that?

The Grand Idea

Anyone can consume the latest news article, podcast, video, or blog (like this one) chock full of AI propaganda, and feel informed, but not really know what is true. For me to actually be informed, I needed hands-on-keyboard experience. 

I could build a lot of little projects to play with ideas, but small projects intended for personal or small-batch use don’t require the rigor of something heading to production. 

I needed a larger project for my weekend AI warrior training. Coming up with that kind of project idea would normally be a challenge. However, I’ve had an idea brewing for decades that actually was the basis for my second startup in 2010. At that time, the development costs for the idea proved too steep, but what if I could build it in 15 minutes for $23 with some well-crafted prompts? Wouldn’t that be amazing!?

The result is Burrow: A solution that connects people to the places and things they love, while helping them discover new local events and organizations. It’s all completely tailored to each person.

Just in case the product took more than 15 minutes to build, I thought recruiting some peers to join me on the journey would be a good move - and more fun. We're ready to bust some AI myths and see what's really possible.

These are our stories.