# Why AI needs less of the grandiose hyperbole > Source: > Published: 2026-05-21 18:52:58+00:00 In covering AI full-time, there are days when I can't stomach one more hyperbole about AI curing all diseases or solving for human abundance. Those aggrandized promises are tough to swallow when I walk down the streets of San Francisco, the AI capital of the world, and see homelessness, a mental health crisis, and extreme poverty existing right next to extreme wealth. I also find it difficult to process when I talk with my friends in the city who are teachers, artists, and nurses. To them, this mythical future of abundance doesn’t mean a whole lot. So I’m pleasantly surprised, even relieved, when I hear anyone talking about AI solving real problems, even if they're less ambitious or more incremental. I was especially astonished to experience it on Wednesday, when Airbnb announced the next steps in its journey to become more than a home rental app. "We believe in technology that can get you off your phone so you can be with the people around you," said Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, an app that runs primarily on your phone. At the company's 2026 Summer Release event at its San Francisco headquarters, Chesky shared a barrage of updates that will make its app easier to use for travelers and hosts alike. He also talked about several ways Airbnb is expanding its offerings to make travel less stressful by taking care of your bags and your rides, and more enjoyable by connecting you with experts who can guide you to unique experiences. But of course, being an AI journalist, I honed in on the few small updates that involve AI: **AI-powered customer support:** Most of us try to avoid customer service chatbots and automated phone systems because they rarely work. So we try to reach a human as quickly as possible to get our problem solved. Airbnb says its AI customer service is now solving people's problems 40% of the time. In most things in life, a 40% success rate is a dismal failure. In customer service, it's close to a miracle. Airbnb is doing it by creating cards that pop up in chat to handle simple requests, like changing your reservation dates. That way, you don't have to sit on hold for 20 minutes to talk to a person to change something that takes 30 seconds.**Personalized listings**: Today, every searcher in the Airbnb app sees the same algorithmic "Listing highlights" (three bullet points) at the top of each rental property listing. The new AI-powered version will customize these three bullets for the factors you're looking for.**Personalized comparisons**: Based on your search criteria, such as "a one-bedroom near the beach with a washer and dryer," Airbnb will now quickly display three to four properties in a table view to match your main criteria. That will save you from having to scan 15 to 20 properties and remember the details from each one, like I had to do recently when scanning for exactly the criteria I mentioned above. It will also save the die-hard Airbnb enthusiasts from having to create spreadsheets to compare the best rentals.**AI-curated reviews for your searches**: There are over a billion customer reviews on Airbnb. Even scanning 20-30 reviews of a single property is daunting. So now the company is using AI to surface the reviews that match the criteria you're looking for. It will highlight in bold the parts of the review that relate to what you're looking for. Hat tip to Chesky and Airbnb for not talking about all the magical ways AI will revolutionize the future of travel. ## Our Deeper View The next time you hear a CEO waxing poetic about AI solving the world's hardest problems in a podcast interview or a conference keynote, I'd like you to go back and re-read our article [The race for power behind AI’s utopian story](https://www.thedeepview.com/articles/the-race-for-power-behind-ai-s-utopian-story). And remember, we don't need AI to solve the future's problems. We need AI to solve today's problems. I'm always ready to hear more about the people working on that, because we're going to accomplish that one step at a time. The future's problems will be solved by good intentions and difficult sacrifices made today, and not by grandiose hyperbole. **Disclosure**: Jason Hiner's travel to the 2026 Summer Release event was paid for by Airbnb. The Deep View's coverage is editorially independent from the companies we cover.