The AI Paradox: How to Make the Most of What AI Can & Can't Do

Have you ever been frustrated by the sheer absurdity of AI’s capabilities? One minute it’s doing advanced calculus like it’s nothing, and the next, it can’t even count simple survey responses correctly. Yeah, I’ve been there. It’s maddening. Welcome to the weird world of AI—where brilliance and baffling incompetence coexist.

Today, let’s dive into what’s behind this frustrating paradox and, more importantly, how you can turn it to your advantage as an AI-driven marketer.

Meet Moravec’s Paradox: Why AI Is Brilliantly Dumb

Here’s what’s at play: Moravec’s Paradox. It’s the bizarre phenomenon that explains why AI can crush some incredibly complex tasks yet fail spectacularly at seemingly simple ones.

We typically imagine intelligence as a linear progression. You learn to count before tackling algebra, right? But with AI, it’s not linear at all. Think of AI intelligence as an ink splat rather than a neat, glowing orb—some advanced skills shoot way out, and frustrating gaps exist everywhere in between.

Examples That Make You Question Reality:

• AI generates stunning, photorealistic images but gives people six fingers. Seriously?
• It masters advanced reasoning overnight but struggles to count simple words or survey responses.

I won’t bore you with the detailed tech explanations (you can Google “Moravec’s Paradox” if you’re curious), but here’s the deal for marketers: You don’t need to deeply understand why it happens. You just need to recognize when it does.

How Marketers Can Thrive in the Chaos

Instead of banging your head against the keyboard every time AI stumbles, let’s flip the script. Understanding AI’s limitations and strengths is your competitive edge.

Here’s how:

• Focus on strengths: AI struggles with basics like counting? Fine, let it handle what it excels at—complex calculations, quick summaries, and advanced analytics.
• Mitigate weaknesses: Use reliable alternatives for its weak points. Can’t count survey responses? Have AI push data into Excel and count there.
• Strategic application: Know what AI struggles with (like realistic video or fingers in images), and plan around these gaps.

Keep Your Finger on AI’s Pulse

AI’s weird limitations are temporary. Improvements happen at lightning speed. Remember when AI couldn’t reason through simple tasks just months ago? Now OpenAI’s newer models (like the O3 and upcoming versions) handle reasoning remarkably well.

Watch for updates not just on flashy features, but on basics:

• AI can now count the “R’s” in strawberry—small win but significant improvement.
• Fingers in AI-generated images are getting better—another small but impactful improvement.

Your advantage as an AI marketer is staying ahead by understanding what’s changing beneath the hype.

Turn Frustration into Your Competitive Edge

If AI were perfect, everyone would use it effortlessly, wiping out any competitive advantage. So, yes, it’s frustrating—but it’s exactly that imperfection that allows savvy marketers like you to shine.

Leverage AI’s strengths, creatively mitigate its weaknesses, and constantly adapt your strategies to the newest improvements.

Want to Dive Deeper?

Join me in San Diego on March 30 at the Social Media Marketing World Conference. It’s hands down the best event to learn more about AI marketing right now, packed with actionable insights and practical strategies. I’ll be speaking and hosting an AMA with Michael Stelzner, with an entire lineup tailored specifically for marketers leveraging AI.

Turn AI’s paradox into your marketing superpower—let’s chat in San Diego!

Episode Transcript & Magic Chat

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In this AI marketing podcast episode, Dan Sanchez dives into the intriguing concept of Moravec's Paradox, examining why AI can excel in complex tasks like advanced math yet fumble over simple tasks such as counting survey responses. He unpacks the paradox, revealing how marketers can navigate and leverage these peculiar strengths and weaknesses of AI. By understanding where AI struggles and succeeds, Dan provides insights on building systems that maximize AI's potential while mitigating its shortcomings. Tune in for strategic advice on staying ahead in the ever-evolving AI landscape and discover how to use Moravec's Paradox to your advantage as a savvy AI-driven marketer.

Resources Mentioned: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/smmworld

• Social Media Marketing World: 

Timestamps:

00:00 AI's Uneven Skill Gaps

05:48 Leveraging AI's Strengths and Limitations

07:15 AI: Focus on Core Improvements

have you ever been frustrated by the fact that AI is so good at some things and so ridiculously bad at what seems to be like a simple task I know it's frustrating when it can do advanced math and calculus and people are bragging about the like Fields metal math that it can do and yet it it still can't freaking count the amount of survey responses I just put into it for some reason let alone calculate what's in those survey responses if you've ever been frustrated about that that's what I want to make this episode about not only why it's happening what's causing it but what to do about it and how you can leverage it to get the most out of it this year as an AI driven marketer welcome back to the show my name's Dan Sanchez my friends call me danz and today I want to help relieve some of that frustration because we've all been caught into it and I want to talk about the Paradox that's at the root that's at the center of this thing that's causing so much frustration when it comes to working with AI that makes it just seem so dumb yet so smart sometimes and it's a term they're calling Mor ofx Paradox yes Mor ofx Paradox so I'm going to jump into a deck real quick to give an illustration of what's going on and if you're following along in an audio podcast just know that I'm going to be spelling out in detail all the visuals that are coming along the way so morx Paradox is a concept to explain why some things some simple things are actually incredibly Advanced for AI and why Advanced things are actually incred simple for AI the way we look at it is intelligence is linear right it's like this bright shining orb if you're if you can't see it I have like this this basic ball of light that kind of dissipates the farther it gets out on the deck in the middle I have the word intelligence we think about intelligence this way so if you can gradually learn how to do math you might learn how to count first and then work your way to something like advanced math right I know big steps for a lot of small baby steps in between those things and it's it's reasonable to think like well if I could do advanced math Out On The Fringe of the intelligence right I put it right here on like the edge of where it's the the light is dissipating then counting is towards the center like I should be able to get that it's it's kind of counterintuitive that AI can be fantastic at advanced math and algebra and calculus but really struggle with something basic like counting yet we find that over and over the place so if I want to adjust this graphic I actually changed it to look more like this blob right here where it looks like an ink Splat on a piece of paper right and I have intelligence in the middle again and the one drop of the ink Splat that's way out there you know advanced math sets on that and and one of the gaps that are in between the splatters you know that the ink isn't covering is the word count because that's how it is with AI it has all these gaps and its knowledge and it seems to shoot way out there on these Advanced topics yet struggles to do some of the more basic things and it does this in multiple ways in lots of different places like it can make photorealistic images yet it struggles to you know have the right amount of fingers like how can it be photo realistic with the face and the hair and the backdrop and yet that person's got six fingers how is that possible well I'm not going to break down like the tech and the science you can go and you like just do a search for more of X Paradox on YouTube and you will have some great explainers breaking out the details I find that knowing the intricacies of why it happens is much less important than to marketers than the fact that it happens and it's happening all over the place the for marketers what you really have to pay attention to is where it's happening and how it's happening for example reasoning was something that AI struggled with just recently right until September came around where open AI launched its 01 reasoning model reasoning was was tough you had to essentially do the reasoning for AI it could do a lot of advanced things but if you wanted it to do a a project that included pretty important tasks in between you'd have to just break it out and ask it to do each task and then guide it through the whole project but AI is always improving and that's the thing that you need to realize and the thing that I'm paying attention to the most as an AI marketer is that these things are improving because now this this is probably an accurate picture of what AI looked like just 6 months ago but today it probably looks a little bit more like this now it's getting fingers right right almost all the time it can actually reason pretty well they just launched they went from 01 preview all the way up to 03 uh mini is where they're at right now and the other ones are probably be coming out shortly and now they can do it can do basic counting it used to struggle to count the amount of RS in Strawberry famously right but now 04 can actually you know count the amount of RS in the word strawberry but it still struggles to count the amount of survey responses I know because I just tried it last week and it's I'm like it's still having a hard time even even the advanced reasoning models still have a hard time counting for some reason which you're like what is going on but it's important to understand where it's at because in understanding it and paying attention to where AI is currently and staying up to date this becomes our advantage as AI marketers it's easy to think like oh I wish it were just easy I wish I could just not have to pick between models I wish it would just do all my work for me and I didn't have to explain very much it would just automatically know and it would just get it done and write the strategy and the tactics and do all the work and all the stuff but if it were that easy everybody would do it and there'd be no real advantage to learning ahead of time right so if you want to take advantage of what's available this year learn pay attention to what it's good at and what it's not good at so that you can build systems to truly leverage what it's good at and then try to find backups or ways of figuring out how to mitigate some of the shortfalls that it has with things like counting and fingers missing and all that kind of stuff for example when I'm using photos I generally try not to focus on fingers right um and everybody knows like how bad AI video is so I tend not to use video and if I do I use it really lightly and subtly in a backdround backdrop of a video in a really small way right so I try to mitigate it and use it sparingly if I need it to count I might ask it to use a math kind of calculator or a computer in order to calculate the equation order to count things or I might have it insert things into Excel and then count them that way before actually doing the math that it needs to do in order to analyze the report so while MOX Paradox is something that still throws a freaking stick in the bike wheel of all of us marketers trying to get stuff done right now you can use it to your advantage by understanding it and learning how to leverage AI where others are going to miss it because they can't get over the fact that AI can't count they're also never going to be able to take take advantage of the fact that it can do advanced math and do some of the other things that it can do so take advantage now learn how to leverage AI to its fullest extent and then pay attention to what's coming out as open Ai and Claude and Google and all the other AI companies make announcements don't look for the new flashy thing it can do look for where it shored up what it used to struggle with and then make your plans accordingly add address your systems and your tactics and your strategies in order to accommodate for the new improvements sure maybe the fancy things it can do on the edge but most of the time I'm looking for what are the simple things that it can now do that's actually quite Advanced for AI to be able to do because that's going to make more gains in our daily lives in our workflows thank you for following along in this quick tutorial on how to take advantage of morx paradox if you want to level up your AI game I highly recommend joining me in San Diego on March 30th for the social media marketing World Conference I will actually be speaking and hosting a AMA with Michael stellner live at the event and there will be a whole track a whole ticket lineup just for AI marketers I swear this is the best AI conference out there right now even though it's called the social media marketing World conference conference uh Michael stellner is building a solid and robust AI lineup that you can take just by itself so come join me in San Diego on March 30th