On Friday’s show, the DAS crew discussed what real AI productivity looks like in 2025, where agents still break down, and how the biggest platforms are pushing assistants into products people already use. They covered fresh survey data on AI at work, Salesforce’s push for more deterministic agents, OpenAI’s role based prompt packs, a reported Waymo in car Gemini assistant, Meta’s non generative “world model” work, holiday AI features, and the ongoing Lovable vs Replit debate for building software fast. The episode also touched on AI infrastructure and power constraints, plus how teams should think about curriculum, playbooks, and repeatable workflows in an AI first world.
Key Points Discussed
Lenny Rachitsky shared survey results from 1,750 tech workers on how AI is actually used at work
55 percent said AI exceeded expectations, 70 percent said it improves work quality
More than half said AI saves at least half a day per week, founders reported the biggest time savings
Designers reported the weakest ROI, founders reported the strongest ROI
92.4 percent reported at least one significant downside, including reliability issues and instruction following problems
Salesforce leaders highlighted agent unreliability and “drift”, AgentForce is adding more deterministic rule based structures to constrain agent behavior
OpenAI Academy published prompt packs grouped by job role, showing how OpenAI frames “default” use cases
Waymo is reportedly working on a Gemini powered ride assistant, surfaced via a discovered system prompt in app code
Meta’s VLJEPA work came up as an example of non generative vision models aimed at world understanding, not image generation
The crew debated Lovable and Replit as fast paths from idea to working app, including where each still breaks down
Timestamps and Topics
00:00:17 👋 Opening, Boxing Day, setting up the “is AI delivering ROI” question
00:02:20 📊 Lenny Rachitsky survey, who was sampled, what it measures
00:05:44 ✅ Top findings, time saved, quality gains, ROI split by role
00:07:33 🧩 Agents and reliability, Salesforce view on drift, AgentForce guardrails
00:10:25 🧰 OpenAI Academy prompt packs by role, why it matters
00:12:07 🚗 Waymo and a Gemini powered ride assistant, system prompt discovery
00:13:05 👁️ Meta VLJEPA, non generative vision and “world model” direction
00:15:47 🎄 Holiday AI features, Santa themed voice and image moments
00:16:34 ⚡ Power and infrastructure constraints, wind and solar angle for AI buildout
00:20:05 🛠️ Lovable vs Replit, speed to product and practical tradeoffs
00:25:00 💻 Claude workflow talk and migration friction (real world setup issues)
00:30:00 ☁️ Cloud strategy, longer prompts, and getting useful outputs from big context
00:38:00 🎓 Curriculum and workforce readiness, what to teach and what to automate
00:40:10 📚 Wikipedia, automation patterns, and reusable knowledge sources
00:43:10 📓 Playbooks and repeatable processes, turning AI into a system not a novelty
00:51:40 🏁 Closing and weekend sendoff