YC's latest batch sure was a lot of 'maybe AI can do... this?'

Sitting through hundreds of startups on YC Demo Days, you're not always sure whether you are actually perceiving patterns or if your brain, as coffee battles with monotony, is inventing them in a kind of pareidolia for business plans. This year, though, the theme was pretty obvious: "AI can do that, probably! Certainly today's AI models are more capable than yesterday's, and yesteryear's. But we've seen over and over how these systems demo well but fall down under systematic requirements or as tools with reliable and repeatable results. It's hard not to see this batch as the precursors of a coming wave of AI-powered shovelware.