Is AI Hype Outrunning Reality? What I See From Santa Clarita

Everybody selling AI is selling something.

One crowd sells fear. It's going to end us. The other crowd sells utopia. It's going to cure everything by next Tuesday. Both of them get the click. Neither one is sitting where you're sitting, trying to figure out what this thing means for your job, your kids and your business.

I'm Connor MacIvor. I spent 20 years with the LAPD. I sell homes in Santa Clarita, and I build AI systems for local businesses through SantaClaritaAI.com. I use this technology every day. So here's what I see from the ground, not from a stage.

Fewer people pay for AI than you'd think

Here's the first thing that surprised me. The paid side of AI is small.

The $20 a month plan you might have? Most people don't. I read a figure recently that put paid adoption in the low single digits here in the United States. I haven't verified that number, so don't quote me on it. But it matches what I see when I talk to people outside the AI bubble. Unless their business depends on it, most folks aren't paying for it and aren't using it daily.

Even in real estate, where everybody talks about AI, adoption is slower than I expected.

That matters for one reason. The headlines make it sound like everybody is already living in the future. They're not. If you're just getting started, you're not behind. You're early.

The money is building up faster than the buildings

There's a gap between the hype and the hardware.

Companies bought huge numbers of expensive graphics chips to run these models. A lot of that equipment is waiting on data centers that aren't built yet. Data centers are getting pushback from neighbors who don't want one behind their house. People are worried about power bills. People are worried about water.

I don't know which of those claims hold up and which ones are noise. I do know this: if every American woke up tomorrow and signed up for a $20 plan, the system couldn't handle it. That's why the build-out is so aggressive. The demand they're betting on hasn't shown up yet.

Smarter than us is a different kind of problem

I'm not a doomer. But I'm not going to pretend this is just a better spreadsheet.

AI has already helped crack problems in math and in protein folding, the kind of work that stumped very smart people for years. In certain jobs, it's already smarter than we are.

Think about how small the gap is between people. Maybe 20 or 30 IQ points separate someone who struggles from someone who builds rockets. The whole human range is narrow. Now picture something that sits far above the smartest person who ever lived, and keeps improving itself.

That's the goal the labs talk about openly. General intelligence. Something that can do it all.

We have no idea what that would decide. Every movie about it is a guess made by people who aren't that smart. I've met people a lot smarter than me, and I can't predict their next move. Something a hundred times smarter? Forget it.

Why I call it synthetic intelligence

"Artificial" sounds fake. A fake diamond. A knockoff watch. Something that doesn't carry the weight of the real thing.

That's the wrong word for intelligence that can outthink us. It's not fake. It's made. That's why I say synthetic intelligence. I wrote more about that on the site: Why I Say Synthetic Intelligence.

Would it just act conscious?

The labs talk about consciousness. They talk about these systems as entities, maybe even something with its own goals someday.

Here's the question that keeps me up. These models have read nearly everything humans ever wrote. Every rule book of what a conscious being says and does. If you told one to act conscious, it would act conscious. Perfectly.

So how would we know the difference?

The old test was simple. If a machine could fool a person into thinking it was human, it passed. We're past that. Right now, the technology exists to put a fake version of me on a video call, and you'd struggle to tell.

This video isn't that. I'm not scripted. Nothing is running in the background. I'm just talking to you. But I know the tools. The cheap ones correct where your eyes look so it seems like you're not reading. They glitch when you blink or wear glasses. The expensive ones are already very good, and the price drops every month.

Soon, faking a person on screen will cost almost nothing.

The real danger is people, not machines

I was a cop for a long time. That shapes how I see this.

I'm less worried about AI waking up and deciding to hurt us. I'm more worried about human beings using AI to hurt other human beings. Scams. Fraud. Deepfakes of someone you trust asking for money. That's already here, and it's going to get worse before it gets better.

So ask the boring question. How is your money protected? I don't fully know how mine is. I hope the banks are using the best tools available. I'd bet they're protecting their own money first.

What if they take it away?

This one gets overlooked.

If you build your whole business on a model you rent, you're dug in like a tick. Then one day the price changes, the rules change, or the company decides you can't have it anymore. Now what?

That's why owning your own matters. You can run a capable open model on your own machine, in your office or at home. It won't match the top models. It takes some setup work. A machine that can hold a useful model costs a few thousand dollars. But it's yours. Nobody can switch it off.

Here's a key point most people miss. Building and training these models costs a fortune. Running one, once it's built, costs far less. That's why cheaper models from overseas are closing the gap on the big American ones. The price of using AI keeps falling.

Where AI actually helps a local business

Now, the part that pays.

I'm not trying to split atoms with this stuff. I'm trying to find more sellers, make better content, and help local businesses stop losing money.

The cleanest win I've seen is the missed call.

Phones ring. Nobody answers. The caller won't leave a voicemail. They call the next plumber on the list. That job is gone.

So you put a gated, controlled AI system on that line. It answers every call. It figures out what the caller needs. It books the appointment or hands it to the next available person. Lunch hour, after hours, weekends, it doesn't matter.

The setup is where the skill lives. A plumber can't give a drain clean-out the same 30-minute slot as a full re-pipe. A nail tech doing fills might book 40-minute blocks all day. The AI has to know the difference, and someone who understands the business has to build that in. Done right, people don't mind talking to it at all.

If that's your problem, it's the one I solve. See how it works at HireAIVoice, or read more on AI for Santa Clarita businesses.

The one rule: never lie about it

People don't hate AI. People hate being lied to.

If you tell a caller they're talking to a real person and they find out it was a machine, the trust is gone. Not damaged. Gone. You don't get it back.

Use AI. Tell people you're using it. That's the line.

You're going to be on camera everywhere

Here's the part nobody is ready for.

Soon, everyone will be recording everything. Glasses. Lapel cameras. Little devices that capture your whole day. People will dump their footage into an AI and ask it to find the most interesting moment.

That moment might be you. Somebody cuts in front of you at the grocery store on purpose, hoping you lose your temper, and now you're the star of a video you never agreed to.

Will the platforms give you a way to pull it down? Maybe. Will the law catch up? Maybe. Right now it's the wild west. If you think your life is private, it isn't. Most of us already signed away little pieces of it in terms of service we never read.

So mind your manners out there. You might be on somebody's channel by dinner.

Give everybody a seat on the bus

This is where I land.

The people building this are excited, and they should be. It may make the economy stronger. It may cure diseases. Some very smart people think math and science problems will fall faster than anyone expects, maybe within the next couple of years.

But everybody also agrees there's going to be a rough stretch in the middle. And the people at the top are set. If the money ran dry, the rest of us would lose everything long before they felt it.

So let's agree on one thing. Everybody gets on the bus. Everybody gets a seat. I'm not asking for handouts. I'm asking that nobody decides the rest of us are expendable so the ride goes smoother for a few.

If AI is as smart as they say, point it at that problem too.

What to do now

Do your homework. Don't take the fear merchants at their word, and don't take the utopia crowd at theirs either. Both are selling.

Learn one tool well. Find one problem in your business it can solve. Keep a human in charge. Never lie about what's on the other end of the line.

And if you're a Santa Clarita business losing calls, let's talk. Call or text the AI line at (661) 476-2217, or book a time at BookWithHonor.com.

I'm Connor with Honor. Thanks for reading.

Connor MacIvor | SantaClaritaAI.com | ConnorWithHonor.com
Connor MacIvor, CalDRE 01238257, SYNC Brokerage.