The Pitfall of "Helpful" AI: Navigating the Missing Context Problem in Software Engineering

If you ask an AI assistant to help you with a workflow, you expect a smart, contextual answer. What you often get, however, is a highly confident assumption masquerading as absolute truth. Recently, I was trying to quickly dump a series of screenshots into a presentation using the Photo Album feature in PowerPoint. I prompted my AI assistant for the quickest way to execute this workflow. Here is the response I received: "Unfortunately, the Photo Album feature is not available in the web version of PowerPoint... Even if you were to download the desktop version on your Mac Mini, you likely wouldn't find it there either. However, since you’re looking to dump screenshots quickly on the web, here are the best workarounds..." The AI sprang into action and gave me a bunch of workarounds to help me achieve my goal. I couldn't have asked for a better answer, unless I was on a Windows PC. But I was, so it missed the mark like a blind archer. Because the AI remembered that I had recently picked u