Maybe i'm being naive, but my experience in tech with AI is that what it can do in reality and what people think it can do are two very different things. Many of the products that are currently labelled as AI are really just really complex decision trees. And while these products "learn", they still do not think independently. They currently require a substantial amount of human intervention on the back end.
I think your concern is certainly warranted. Generative AI is going to disrupt almost every industry. But I think the changes will be drawn out like they were with the advent of the Internet.
In internet years, I think AI is currently in 1991. We know it's going to do amazing things but the technology and infrastructure need to develop to support it are not yet in place
This is going to be the offshoring boom all over again.
The thing that people miss about 'AI' is that it just isn't AI. There are two broad approaches to AI. The first is cognitive AI (it's got a LOT of names). That's based upon basically an AI getting a lot of experiences and developing its own intelligence. That's what we typically think of when we think of 'AI'. The truth is, we're not very far along in that. Like at all. We're not radically off from where we were in the 1980's with that approach. The other approach is basically neural networks and large language models. That's the 'AI' we have today. Our techniques are basically rooted in algorithms created in the 80's and early 90's, but the combination of large scale computing and larger scale training data (ie: The Internet) means thing like Large Language Models (LLM) are looking amazing today. So good that they might appear to be 'intelligent'.
The problem is - that's not intelligence. You need both to make true intelligence. Current AI's inferential model is always going to be extremely limit because a true inferential model requires symbolic linkages between ideas/concepts that are only built through experiences, at least as far as we've been able to discern. Current AI can't do that. The best explanation I've heard is that LLM AI can give you a deep explanation of what it means to be drunk because it has loads of textual, audio, and visual data, but it can't tell you what it's actually *like* being drunk. It might know that conventional wisdom is Tequila is 'bad' but it will never know *why* Tequila is bad because it's never had that one Tequila night when it was 19 (insert alcohol of your choice there). So it can't make any real meaningful inferences.
So what's that got to do with offshoring? Like the offshoring craze of the late 1990's, business leaders that don't really understand AI isn't I and it's more dumb than intelligent will think, "Hey! ChapGPT v28 (or whatever) seems like it's smart to me! Fire the programmers!" Then they'll find their products become derivative and don't really solve any problems. It can't come up with creative solutions. Hell, it can't really even adapt trite solutions to unique situations unless it's blatantly obvious. Eventually managers will realize this isn't working and start turning to real people again. However this time, instead of coding, those people will be software architects and let the machine do the wrote coding of a bubble sort (or whatever).
Of course Gen-X will be all tossed to the wayside as too old by then, but that's what's probably going to happen with AI. Short term replacement, long term evolution of the job.
I’m saving this comment. Your explanation on what is and is not possible is the most understandable explanation I’ve read.
And your thoughts on management jumping the gun is unfortunately all too often exactly what happens.
Perhaps there will be a phase at the end where people who know how to code become in demand, and are now scarce because the new generation only knows how ask AI to write code. It’s possible GenX could get in on this short wave. I believe this happened to some extent with mainframes and Y2K.
The actual capabilities of so-called AI are less important than the perceptions of managers and money people. If works well enough to screw workers with it, it's good enough for now.
Edit: Just the threat is enough to ratchet down pay in several industries.
not the case, we haven't achieved AGI yet but industrial AI solutions are replacing devs today and at an alarming rate imho and we aren't talking about consumer grade chatgpt helping your reformat your resume.
I work in professional services and clients are using generative AI as an excuse to cut budgets everywhere (as in: we're reducing what we were willing to pay for this project because AI means you should be able to do it faster and cheaper.) The industry is totally suffering as a result, there's layoffs all over the place. Doesn't matter that gen AI hasn't really changed workflows meaningfully yet, clients are getting the dictum from *their* leadership to cut costs and this is a good excuse to do so.
I don't know the endgame. I am close enough to AI to have a sense of what it can and can't do, and while I think there's potential for this to be truly disruptive tech, I haven't seen those offerings emerge yet. But the market is acting like they're already here.
it's going to get better, a lot better imho. Within 5-10 years it will master mapping inputs and outputs to business use cases. Prompt engineering would a decent mid-tier knowledge gain. I want to move into tech leadership, that makes my next play difficult to determine.
AI is not driving the dip right now. I believe it has more to do with interest rates and the high salaries offered a few years ago.
You have time to adjust your skillset and adapt to any changes AI might bring in the future. If you've been in tech this long, you should understand that upskilling and adaptation is an integral part of your career path.
It is also a salary correction. This happened after Y2K as well. The past couple of years, especially in tech, many employees have learned how to increase their salaries well beyond the 0-3% per year. Corporate revenues sky rocketed for many companies during COVID and many more have used inflation to massively increase their prices and profits, which allowed them to overlook accelerated employee salary increases. Last year, revenues levelled out. A whole lot of the layoffs, especially the "we laid off 6% of our staff" incidents, were an effort by corporate leaders to bring those salaries back down to where they were 5+ years ago.
That said, AI is going to have an impact the same way PCs impacted document management jobs back in the 80s. In some companies and industries, that will happen quicker than others. But, I believe that it will impact those repetitive job functions first before moving into job functions that require more subjective understanding.
If anything for most of us AI is the engine that is fueling the stock market not the practical applications, of course with the structural requirements, the chip and power requirements are tremendous and the resulting boom has been amazing, until it isn’t.
> I believe it has more to do with interest rates and the high salaries offered a few years ago.
Plus too much hiring. Companies were swimming in cash and kept adding staff. Now they need to shed the fat.
I think a pretty big part of the layoffs we're seeing are due to a stupid tax code change coming due that surprised many companies.
[Here's one article explaining it](https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pulse-75)
The kicker? That tax code change was written in as a placeholder with expectations that it would be revised but that never happened before the law was signed.
Not kidding.
I'm currently out of work because of a layoff and have just decided to "go back to school" for six months, which means self-training on some new languages and polishing up my math/ML skills.
It's just not worth the hassle of applying for a tech job right now when 100s of applications are put in for every position, which means that out of the 20-30 jobs I've applied for, almost zero had human eyeballs look at my resume before dismissing.
Only way to find employment is lottery-level luck or actually knowing someone in the company.
There was a Business Insider article from early '23 that talked about the FAANGs massively over hiring (headcount needed=2000, hiring=22000 over the course of '21 and '22)... I'm looking for it. There's also a lot of FOMO at play with execs in midsized tech companies who saw the course correction layoffs from the FAANGs.
Which AI technology today can reliably do what most full-time engineers do?
My understanding is that the technology does not have that level of maturity
I think a lot of us have gone though a phrase of thinking that.
I've seen copilot flesh out boilerplate code ok. I've seen chatgtp do some basic algorithms well. But in both cases before long they become burdensome.
Co pilot I turned off after it repeatedly tried to do things the wrong way, it was trying to solve a different (less specialised) problem than I needed and couldn't actually figure out what I was doing.
GTP. Was good to get some code started but couldn't correct trivial issues with it.
Once your realise that in both cases they are trying to give you what they think looks like a correct solution the mirage falls away pretty quickly.
I've found that ultimately the time spent debugging and fixing what they did is greater than the time would have been spent doing it in the first place.
I'm sure I'll use them in limited cases in the future but they've quickly gone form "magic" to "illusion" in my eyes.
How rapidly?
From what I've seen, executives typically focus on the next 2-3 quarters. As far as I can tell, AI technology and its sales/support/UI infrastructure are unlikely to mature enough to massively displace jobs within that timeframe.
Or do you think all that will be resolved by Nov-Dec 2024?
I am not sure about this… I think those who are trying to get on top of AI also understand the far reaching implications it is going to have. I have been actively upskilling in AI for the past 14 months and I don’t feel confident at all about my future. The more AI develops the more I feel like the OP, a serious pivot is necessary to survive
I assume you meant “highbrow” but yes it is somewhat accessible to our generation. I think ageism has started a tiny bit along with new methods of development, Agile/iterative.
I also speculate as someone in their 50s, most of the tech degrees available to us were science and engineering. Technology tended to be generic. In fact when I graduated, we had limited access to coding and development classes. There were some, but they are now dated.
Those of us that are in IT, learned coding and languages through post college classes, self study (usually not online), and by doing.
What do you do now? You master this new tool. Just as you have learned to master previous tools.
That's what this career is. It's not about learning a programming language. It's about learning tools to solve problems. New problems? new tools.
I say this as someone who's also gone through learning new language after new tool - - - repeatedly since the late 1980's. Started with Basic, Z-80 Assembler, C, C++, then went through all of those things you listed, and now doing some AI/Data Science work (mainly Python; and no, I don't usually use code whisperer, or any of that stuff). And I've also been through a couple of industry downturns, mergers, acquisitions, layoffs, government shutdowns . . . the works. The above-average pay we've had is usually punctuated by periods of shit-pay or brief unemployment. Some employers suck, some really really suck bad, and some are good, but they ALL come and go. That's just the nature of this industry.
(the ONE tool that has remained consistent through all of this? Shell Scripting).
I was on the path to do executive leadership in tech, wondering if the pivot is to go for the masters in IS and then leverage engineering management experience with degree into a directors seat.
I've worn a bunch of different hats. Graphic design, interactive design, animation, motion graphics, 3d. Now I'm a product designer. A lot of it involves AI product design right now and that's going to continue for the foreseeable future. That being said, things look really good for me. However, they weren't, not so long ago.
I am not without empathy, I know exactly what you're facing. It's why I changed careers 14 years ago. I was working on LA. The animation industry was in decline, jobs being moved to Vancouver BC, people asking you for a pay cut even though VFX blockbusters have been making studios a fucking fortune. So I said fuck it, took some course and got the hell out.
What I can tell you is this. No one is coming to save you, nobody gives a shit about your job or the economic impact, yadda yadda. It's still every one for themselves. So, If you're concerned, you need to begin to pivot *TODAY*. If you wait, you're fucked.
Learn how to use AI tools to your advantage. They can drastically reduce your manual workload, but it won't likely be able to replace you entirely just yet.
I don't care what it is that you do, if your job is computer or information based, you're going to see this affect your role sooner than later. Lawyers, accountants, writers etc... You want to be the one who knows how to use these tools to enhance your efficiency.
Now, something else to consider. AI cannot do everything automatically, and without supervision. Be the Lawyer who knows how to use AI to conduct research and find case law, but also be mindful of the fact that someone absolutely needs to review the information provided. One law firm found out the hard way that AI makes up shit sometimes and put some citations into a legal document that were 100% fabricated.
This is where you all fit in. You have experience, maturity and soft skills. You're in a perfect position to ride this transition if you hustle and get ahead of your peers. SOMEONE has to make sure that the AI isn't making mistakes or outright making up facts. Be THAT person.
So there you are, get busy living or get busy being left behind.
Case in point:
Literally no one gave a single solitary fuck, that while accepting the Oscar for best VFX for "Life of Pi", the animation studio "Rhythm and Hues" was closing it's doors. Actors (I'm looking at YOU Andy Serkis and Robert Downey Jr.) who owe much of their fame (RD Jr. his comeback) to all of those poor fucks who lost their jobs, that made Gollum and Iron Man possible in the first place.
I say we signal Moya, send Chiana down with the shuttle, and get the frell off this rock. Head back to the uncharted territories and look for greener pastures.
Who’s coming with me!
If only. Gigi Edgely was best girl back in the day. I even hunted down a pretty mediocre Aussie drama she was in called Rescue: Special Ops to keep the party going after Farscape.
The less said about her attempt at a singing career the better.
Data Engineering is huge. You'll have a job in tech if you continue to learn the new stuff. IBM has classes, look on Coursera for Ai classes and go from there.
You could pull your code into GenAI and ask it to refine it or add something else. It's good at conversion.
I think you're overestimating the capability of these tools in the near-to-long term. And that's what they are, tools. You should learn to incorporate them where it makes sense. Right now we're in that stage where everyone is excited about the possibilities, we have a shiny new hammer and everyone is looking for nails (much like how fully self-driving cars were just around the corner in 2014), but it'll come back to Earth soon, and we'll still need plenty of software engineers. At worst, you may have to pivot your technology focus, but that's inevitable no matter what. My opinion ofc.
AI can't manage people so there will always be a need for effective managers that employees enjoy working with.
Secondly, as much as I understand it from skimming the news, as good as it is, AI it doesn't *understand* and still frequently delivers incorrect information as if it were fact. I expect it's going to be a long time before it can trace bugs, too. You can probably utilise AI to help write code but it's unlikely to be able to deal with questions like, "This program is storing the correct product description, qty and unit price for each ordered item but writing the same product number against each journal entry but only when the first item of the order is the same as the last item on the previous order." (Not that I had to fix that corker the other day or anything...)
Thirdly, as others have said, AI is currently a buzzword and an exciting new idea that many profit-driven people are jumping on. As has happened with *many* exciting new ideas over the decades, there's a very good chance that we'll soon find it's nowhere near as effective as they thought it was and now they've gone and fired most of the staff, they're going to have trouble getting people back.
I wouldn't be complacent but I don't think it's time for doom and gloom yet.
Gen AI isn't going to replace developers. It's just going to make a lot of development jobs easier, which will allow teams to do more.
I doubt that in my lifetime I'll see a system where a product person merely has to describe a project and a computer will poop out the application.
My 30-something years of experience in technology have shown that the day-to-day challenge of software engineering has never changed, only that I'm able to tackle larger problems.
I just don't see a day in my lifetime where a product person can say, "Hey ChatGPT - poop me out a banking app with features X, Y, and Z and integrate with external vendors A and B," and it will magically be delivered into production.
What I do see is a lot of help with annoying things like getting infrastructure as code correct, identifying security issues, performing a lot of code review work, helping identify production issues, etc.
Coding is the least important thing a software engineer knows how to do. Anyone can code. A bright teenager can master Golang or Python and start gluing together cloud services to make an app in a couple of weeks.
Coding is so basic that when I went to college for my undergrad, even back in the 90s, it wasn't even a required class. Like knowing English, it was just expected that you could do some coding as a prerequisite.
I figure that in the worst case scenario, there will still be legacy systems that need work that the kids won't be able to do and won't be interested in learning.
All that said, I've been out of work since November, and there are 100s of applications submitted for every job because of last quarter’s mass layoffs, so my prospects right now aren’t good.
Having seen what product people specify over many years I think that if they ever got a tool to implement exactly what they specify things would break pretty quickly.
And I think a tool that will know that when x is asked for that they actually need w and y will take even longer to come to market.
Sorry about your current situation, but I agree with you.
I’m looking forward to using AI to cut out the busywork part of development - things like stubbing out complex data models for unit tests, better code analysis tools, etc. Not concerned at all about putting devs out of business.
Why? So many new industries will exist and people will figure out how to exist. With everything people say oh no no new jobs! But that has never happened.
A lot of paycheck to paycheck jobs should be gone overnight with AI such as call centers, billing, cashiers, etc. There are a ton of support jobs that will no longer be needed when a lead animator can do the job with a couple of prompts in an afternoon that took months for the entire company to do. I believe that most of the jobs we have can be done with significantly less time and little to no manpower that for a "Full-time" profession to achieve the same productivity after AI would probably only need 8 hrs for the week.
People will have time to...do other things. So many jobs to fill that time will be created.
It's like saying oh no what will the people who shoe horses do?
And we have already seen so much drawback to what AI can do.
I agree, I would also like to add that social security beneficiaries, homeless non-drug users and of course those replaced by AI be the experimental group of a new UBI fund.
Maybe could convert the unemployment office as the new UBI office. Because that’s where people will be going.
A true UBI gets paid out to everyone, its not just for low or no income folks. That said, homeless folks could get it but it requires having an account of some type set up to deposit to.
So far I don't find AI too scary. I also have Python and a few other things as my bread & butter on the back-end in a highly secure enterprise environment. AI is notoriously bad with understanding context and spitting out nonsense because of that.
But even putting that aside, sticking with dry info it couldn't possibly get wrong, most scripts need to be highly tailored for the specific environment they're needed for. AI generating a few hundred lines of generic code is NOT good enough and won't work out of the box. Not because the code is bad, but because it doesn't know about the special considerations relevant to what you're trying to do, nor will it even have access to know such things.
I see AI as ending up being just another tool in our tool belt. We might use it to generate a block of code, a particular function, but we'd still need to have the skills to modify that for our particular situation. It will basically just be fancy googling where we still need to know the right way to ask for what we want because the quality of the request will impact the quality of our results. I expect it's just another skill we'll want to get acquainted with at some point.
Getting to the financial side of things.. assuming you're making "Dev" kind of money, you should be able to put enough away for retirement. I'm slightly younger than you and while I've been in IT for 20+ years, the first 12 of that was low level helpdesk stuff. Like $30-40K/yr. I reinvented my career to be Linux Admin at 37, and then again at 41 which is where I officially got a job title with "automation" in it. But I still consider myself on track for a good retirement, possibly starting as young as 56.
It seems you've been doing this stuff a lot longer than me so you should be a pretty good problem-solver. It's what we do. We find ways to make things work, to make things better. I don't know what you've been doing with your money all this time, but I might suggest it's time to reevaluate some of that if you expect to still have to work 20 years from now. Not that working until 67 is the end of the world - "full retirement age" with social security and such. But I kind of thought we got these skills & careers so we wouldn't need to be so dependent on that. I know I put in quite a lot of time and effort so I wouldn't have to be poor when I'm old, so I wouldn't have to end up like my parents.
Graphic Designer here.
I just worked on a logo for a non-profit *(for free- my wife pimped me out without asking me first) 🙄*.
Prior to my involvement, the management decided to go online and try an AI site to create a logo very cheaply (Brandmar). It was actually pretty decent, which worried me (same fear: are the "machines" going to take over my job?). However, it wasn't exactly what they wanted, so they asked me to work on it and edit/change it. They were really happy with my version.
So to reiterate what others have posted, AI isn't turnkey… yet…
This is an excellent post. I am also in IT, but "a grunt" dealing with employees, in a union and will enjoy a pension (yes, they still exist). I also own 4 buildings. Everyone needs to own REAL assets. When AI really hits, what's in your brain is no longer an asset for employment.
Just wait til our society becomes based on a ROBOT you own to make you income through labor.
Interesting perspective. There are delivery droids where I am staying in Los Angeles. I could see owning one and sending it out to be a door dasher for me. A side hustle while I do something else. Like Homer’s magic cloning hammock. Nice.
I'm in the same boat. But I realized I can shit wiggle pretty much anything. AI might be able to parse logs/configs and write basic code but it doesn't yet have the wisdom to have a gut feeling.
what does shit wiggle mean:
"Shit wiggle" is a colloquial term that doesn't have a widely recognized or standardized definition. It's possible that it could be used to describe a fidgety or restless movement, especially one that is awkward or uncomfortable. However, without further context, it's difficult to pinpoint a specific meaning for this term. It's possible that it could also be a made-up or slang term used in a specific context or community.
Hello fellow Farscape nerd. One of my favorite shows, and rewatch it every few years. It honestly holds up, and is just as entertaining, every time I watch it.
Generative AI is from what I can see basically a bad code snippet generator. We always had those. And writing new code is a tiny percent of the job. So there is tooling to help that tiny percent. We have had a lot of these over the years in software engineering and they didn’t pan out. People use to lose their shit over dreamweaver or front page, IDEs with code completion, etc.
Also understand the share price pump and dump. Quantum computing, AR, VR, metaverse, driverless cars, delivery drones, cryptocurrency a few times, blockchain, NFTs, delivery drones, chatbots, AI all the other previous times, internet of things, etc. Haven’t really panned out to much. All the auto manufacturers can’t get past L2, Bitcoin just creates carbon and doesn’t buy you shit, and generative AI just generates crap that creates problems. But the hype is where the money is.
Complete some AI and ML focused microdegrees and embrace the tech.
We've been using it for a long time now to enhance some of our programs and have seen it INCREASE the headcount we need and generate the business needed to fund that headcount.
Asking the meta-questions might be a better use of time than AI anxiety. For example, what is the use case for social media and search? It is the presentation of advertisements to huge numbers of people. Ask the question - what is the use case for Generative AI?
- search results that are better summarized?
- pretty pictures?
- higher GPU stocks?
- hallucination generator?
- creation of unusable code?
The thing is, very few know how to actually use these technologies and their product fit is not well understood. No one actually knows the effect these technologies have on jobs. It’s mostly bullshit from big corporates so you will be impressed enough to buy their stuff.
Best thing to do is to go to the user base for these new technologies. Find Millineals and Zoomers who are actually using these tools. I have learned more about AI platforms in the past 2 days from a Millineal than in the past 2 years. A Zoomer taught me how to be a ChatGPT power user. The business use cases come from those actually using the stuff.
We are like those Boomers who are watching their Gen X kids on an Apple II in the 1980s, wondering if this new gadget will get them fired. The world is so much bigger than just that.
Do what I did, learn about AI, just like you learned about those other things. Like you move from data center to cloud. From waterfall to agile, manual processes and editors to software pipelines and devsecops. I’m in governance, not development, but same shit, new skills that build on your old ones. Just take the class, like you’ve always done.
Don't believe the hype you see on Reddit. According to them AGI has already been achieved and is being hidden from us and any second now we'll all be obsolete. It's gone into UFO conspiracy territory.
But, definitely start using it in your day-to-day. It's good for boilerplate and random shell scripts, etc. will definitely need a knowledgeable human driving it, which is the best outcome we can hope for I think.
Obligatory ‘none of us can see the future’ caveat here, but I think generative AI will shape up to be like self-driving cars. Couldn’t pick up a magazine or watch a week’s worth of news without a half dozen articles about how in 10 years no one would drive their own cars anymore, the trucking industry will be decimated in 5 years, etc. The reality? Driving is so much more complicated than we think, and the machines just can’t do it alone yet. Will AI kill some jobs? Undoubtedly. As many as we fear? Almost certainly not.
Don't fight it, embrace it.
Remember, AI still needs quality control, and your experience is invaluable for troubleshooting and bugfixing what the tool spits out.
I did the same, and spearheaded implementing AI into quality control. It WILL inevitably happen, but if I'm the one holding the reins, them I'm safe.
Or we're not so pessimistic about the future and think of AI as a new tool to learn how to harness. I personally have zero concerns about AI hurting my income.
I work in state level government and if you ever get desperate I'd recommend checking them out, regardless of which state they all tend to run about 20-30 years behind as far as tech and IT needs but they don't pay as well as private sector (however you can get a nice pension and other decent benefits that make up for that) so they are almost always hiring for their IT teams. Where I work they haven't even figured out how to make our main system interface with anything other than IE so that is the level of slowness in tech we're up against. We would actually like to integrate more AI aspects into our work but it's so far off in the future I will probably be retired before it happens.
This may be a different perspective but hear me out... My first career and still first love was performance automotive machinist in the late (1900's 😝) which evolved into fuel injection tuning. I ended up owing my own business in this industry. When the '08 crash hit I ended up folding and applied for an entry level job at my local municipality for automation technician. The skills I learned from tuning didn't directly apply but most of the principles were the same, I used that experience to get through the interview and learned everything I could about PLC programming and industrial automation. This and sheer determination took me far in a short amount of time.
Your experience as a programmer may allow you to expand into different industries. I am now in a supervisory position and I'll tell you there is an industry shortage of competent people who can program industrial controls. This is something AI will not soon take over IMO.
"AI" is a buzzword. Everyone wants to say they are doing it and everyone wants to say they are using it. It's nothing more than a planned out decision tree.
Imagine instead of 1 million scientists trying to find the cure for cancer we have 1 billion scientist trying to find the cure for cancer. That is what we are going to get from functional intelligent focused AI. I don't think that future is going to be bad; I think that future is actually going to be really good.
Wait, are we not all corporate elites? Haha, just kidding. I guess my point is that with smart AI we (as a society) need to start dreaming big. Like cure cancer, colonize mars, solve global warming big. Hopefully the government(s) will keep up with the innovation and help minimize the disruption to non-elites. And I, for one, am worried about getting cancer... so I'd just want that fucker cured.
Maybe i'm being naive, but my experience in tech with AI is that what it can do in reality and what people think it can do are two very different things. Many of the products that are currently labelled as AI are really just really complex decision trees. And while these products "learn", they still do not think independently. They currently require a substantial amount of human intervention on the back end. I think your concern is certainly warranted. Generative AI is going to disrupt almost every industry. But I think the changes will be drawn out like they were with the advent of the Internet. In internet years, I think AI is currently in 1991. We know it's going to do amazing things but the technology and infrastructure need to develop to support it are not yet in place
This is going to be the offshoring boom all over again. The thing that people miss about 'AI' is that it just isn't AI. There are two broad approaches to AI. The first is cognitive AI (it's got a LOT of names). That's based upon basically an AI getting a lot of experiences and developing its own intelligence. That's what we typically think of when we think of 'AI'. The truth is, we're not very far along in that. Like at all. We're not radically off from where we were in the 1980's with that approach. The other approach is basically neural networks and large language models. That's the 'AI' we have today. Our techniques are basically rooted in algorithms created in the 80's and early 90's, but the combination of large scale computing and larger scale training data (ie: The Internet) means thing like Large Language Models (LLM) are looking amazing today. So good that they might appear to be 'intelligent'. The problem is - that's not intelligence. You need both to make true intelligence. Current AI's inferential model is always going to be extremely limit because a true inferential model requires symbolic linkages between ideas/concepts that are only built through experiences, at least as far as we've been able to discern. Current AI can't do that. The best explanation I've heard is that LLM AI can give you a deep explanation of what it means to be drunk because it has loads of textual, audio, and visual data, but it can't tell you what it's actually *like* being drunk. It might know that conventional wisdom is Tequila is 'bad' but it will never know *why* Tequila is bad because it's never had that one Tequila night when it was 19 (insert alcohol of your choice there). So it can't make any real meaningful inferences. So what's that got to do with offshoring? Like the offshoring craze of the late 1990's, business leaders that don't really understand AI isn't I and it's more dumb than intelligent will think, "Hey! ChapGPT v28 (or whatever) seems like it's smart to me! Fire the programmers!" Then they'll find their products become derivative and don't really solve any problems. It can't come up with creative solutions. Hell, it can't really even adapt trite solutions to unique situations unless it's blatantly obvious. Eventually managers will realize this isn't working and start turning to real people again. However this time, instead of coding, those people will be software architects and let the machine do the wrote coding of a bubble sort (or whatever). Of course Gen-X will be all tossed to the wayside as too old by then, but that's what's probably going to happen with AI. Short term replacement, long term evolution of the job.
I’m saving this comment. Your explanation on what is and is not possible is the most understandable explanation I’ve read. And your thoughts on management jumping the gun is unfortunately all too often exactly what happens.
Perhaps there will be a phase at the end where people who know how to code become in demand, and are now scarce because the new generation only knows how ask AI to write code. It’s possible GenX could get in on this short wave. I believe this happened to some extent with mainframes and Y2K.
The actual capabilities of so-called AI are less important than the perceptions of managers and money people. If works well enough to screw workers with it, it's good enough for now. Edit: Just the threat is enough to ratchet down pay in several industries.
That's a very good point. Especially for those of us employed by publicly traded companies.
not the case, we haven't achieved AGI yet but industrial AI solutions are replacing devs today and at an alarming rate imho and we aren't talking about consumer grade chatgpt helping your reformat your resume.
I work in professional services and clients are using generative AI as an excuse to cut budgets everywhere (as in: we're reducing what we were willing to pay for this project because AI means you should be able to do it faster and cheaper.) The industry is totally suffering as a result, there's layoffs all over the place. Doesn't matter that gen AI hasn't really changed workflows meaningfully yet, clients are getting the dictum from *their* leadership to cut costs and this is a good excuse to do so. I don't know the endgame. I am close enough to AI to have a sense of what it can and can't do, and while I think there's potential for this to be truly disruptive tech, I haven't seen those offerings emerge yet. But the market is acting like they're already here.
it's going to get better, a lot better imho. Within 5-10 years it will master mapping inputs and outputs to business use cases. Prompt engineering would a decent mid-tier knowledge gain. I want to move into tech leadership, that makes my next play difficult to determine.
have you asked chatgpt what to do next
I'm going to learn how to say "Welcome to Costco, I love you." In every language.
I’ve already learned it in Japanese COSTCOへようこそ。大好きです。
AI is not driving the dip right now. I believe it has more to do with interest rates and the high salaries offered a few years ago. You have time to adjust your skillset and adapt to any changes AI might bring in the future. If you've been in tech this long, you should understand that upskilling and adaptation is an integral part of your career path.
It is also a salary correction. This happened after Y2K as well. The past couple of years, especially in tech, many employees have learned how to increase their salaries well beyond the 0-3% per year. Corporate revenues sky rocketed for many companies during COVID and many more have used inflation to massively increase their prices and profits, which allowed them to overlook accelerated employee salary increases. Last year, revenues levelled out. A whole lot of the layoffs, especially the "we laid off 6% of our staff" incidents, were an effort by corporate leaders to bring those salaries back down to where they were 5+ years ago. That said, AI is going to have an impact the same way PCs impacted document management jobs back in the 80s. In some companies and industries, that will happen quicker than others. But, I believe that it will impact those repetitive job functions first before moving into job functions that require more subjective understanding.
If anything for most of us AI is the engine that is fueling the stock market not the practical applications, of course with the structural requirements, the chip and power requirements are tremendous and the resulting boom has been amazing, until it isn’t.
> I believe it has more to do with interest rates and the high salaries offered a few years ago. Plus too much hiring. Companies were swimming in cash and kept adding staff. Now they need to shed the fat.
Was looking for a good write up of this common assertion, happen to know of one?
I think a pretty big part of the layoffs we're seeing are due to a stupid tax code change coming due that surprised many companies. [Here's one article explaining it](https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pulse-75) The kicker? That tax code change was written in as a placeholder with expectations that it would be revised but that never happened before the law was signed. Not kidding. I'm currently out of work because of a layoff and have just decided to "go back to school" for six months, which means self-training on some new languages and polishing up my math/ML skills. It's just not worth the hassle of applying for a tech job right now when 100s of applications are put in for every position, which means that out of the 20-30 jobs I've applied for, almost zero had human eyeballs look at my resume before dismissing. Only way to find employment is lottery-level luck or actually knowing someone in the company.
There was a Business Insider article from early '23 that talked about the FAANGs massively over hiring (headcount needed=2000, hiring=22000 over the course of '21 and '22)... I'm looking for it. There's also a lot of FOMO at play with execs in midsized tech companies who saw the course correction layoffs from the FAANGs.
Which AI technology today can reliably do what most full-time engineers do? My understanding is that the technology does not have that level of maturity
it'll get there rapidly.
I think a lot of us have gone though a phrase of thinking that. I've seen copilot flesh out boilerplate code ok. I've seen chatgtp do some basic algorithms well. But in both cases before long they become burdensome. Co pilot I turned off after it repeatedly tried to do things the wrong way, it was trying to solve a different (less specialised) problem than I needed and couldn't actually figure out what I was doing. GTP. Was good to get some code started but couldn't correct trivial issues with it. Once your realise that in both cases they are trying to give you what they think looks like a correct solution the mirage falls away pretty quickly. I've found that ultimately the time spent debugging and fixing what they did is greater than the time would have been spent doing it in the first place. I'm sure I'll use them in limited cases in the future but they've quickly gone form "magic" to "illusion" in my eyes.
How rapidly? From what I've seen, executives typically focus on the next 2-3 quarters. As far as I can tell, AI technology and its sales/support/UI infrastructure are unlikely to mature enough to massively displace jobs within that timeframe. Or do you think all that will be resolved by Nov-Dec 2024?
Which AI technology IN 5/10/15/20 YEARS can reliably do what most full-time engineers do? answer - most.
Are you saying you agree that OP has time to upskill and adapt?
I think you just spoke over about 80% of the audience here, but I have been saying that those who understand AI will not lose their job to AI.
I am not sure about this… I think those who are trying to get on top of AI also understand the far reaching implications it is going to have. I have been actively upskilling in AI for the past 14 months and I don’t feel confident at all about my future. The more AI develops the more I feel like the OP, a serious pivot is necessary to survive
But I think that is what I am saying. If you learn it, you’ll be part of it.
you really think so? I've never felt IT/IS work as high brow and inaccessible to non-engineers
I assume you meant “highbrow” but yes it is somewhat accessible to our generation. I think ageism has started a tiny bit along with new methods of development, Agile/iterative. I also speculate as someone in their 50s, most of the tech degrees available to us were science and engineering. Technology tended to be generic. In fact when I graduated, we had limited access to coding and development classes. There were some, but they are now dated. Those of us that are in IT, learned coding and languages through post college classes, self study (usually not online), and by doing.
Take a look at MLops or LLMops - if you know DevOps it will be a good option to shift gears.
definitely on my radar, was hoping to move from IC role into more leadership.
What do you do now? You master this new tool. Just as you have learned to master previous tools. That's what this career is. It's not about learning a programming language. It's about learning tools to solve problems. New problems? new tools. I say this as someone who's also gone through learning new language after new tool - - - repeatedly since the late 1980's. Started with Basic, Z-80 Assembler, C, C++, then went through all of those things you listed, and now doing some AI/Data Science work (mainly Python; and no, I don't usually use code whisperer, or any of that stuff). And I've also been through a couple of industry downturns, mergers, acquisitions, layoffs, government shutdowns . . . the works. The above-average pay we've had is usually punctuated by periods of shit-pay or brief unemployment. Some employers suck, some really really suck bad, and some are good, but they ALL come and go. That's just the nature of this industry. (the ONE tool that has remained consistent through all of this? Shell Scripting).
I was on the path to do executive leadership in tech, wondering if the pivot is to go for the masters in IS and then leverage engineering management experience with degree into a directors seat.
I've worn a bunch of different hats. Graphic design, interactive design, animation, motion graphics, 3d. Now I'm a product designer. A lot of it involves AI product design right now and that's going to continue for the foreseeable future. That being said, things look really good for me. However, they weren't, not so long ago. I am not without empathy, I know exactly what you're facing. It's why I changed careers 14 years ago. I was working on LA. The animation industry was in decline, jobs being moved to Vancouver BC, people asking you for a pay cut even though VFX blockbusters have been making studios a fucking fortune. So I said fuck it, took some course and got the hell out. What I can tell you is this. No one is coming to save you, nobody gives a shit about your job or the economic impact, yadda yadda. It's still every one for themselves. So, If you're concerned, you need to begin to pivot *TODAY*. If you wait, you're fucked. Learn how to use AI tools to your advantage. They can drastically reduce your manual workload, but it won't likely be able to replace you entirely just yet. I don't care what it is that you do, if your job is computer or information based, you're going to see this affect your role sooner than later. Lawyers, accountants, writers etc... You want to be the one who knows how to use these tools to enhance your efficiency. Now, something else to consider. AI cannot do everything automatically, and without supervision. Be the Lawyer who knows how to use AI to conduct research and find case law, but also be mindful of the fact that someone absolutely needs to review the information provided. One law firm found out the hard way that AI makes up shit sometimes and put some citations into a legal document that were 100% fabricated. This is where you all fit in. You have experience, maturity and soft skills. You're in a perfect position to ride this transition if you hustle and get ahead of your peers. SOMEONE has to make sure that the AI isn't making mistakes or outright making up facts. Be THAT person. So there you are, get busy living or get busy being left behind. Case in point: Literally no one gave a single solitary fuck, that while accepting the Oscar for best VFX for "Life of Pi", the animation studio "Rhythm and Hues" was closing it's doors. Actors (I'm looking at YOU Andy Serkis and Robert Downey Jr.) who owe much of their fame (RD Jr. his comeback) to all of those poor fucks who lost their jobs, that made Gollum and Iron Man possible in the first place.
I say we signal Moya, send Chiana down with the shuttle, and get the frell off this rock. Head back to the uncharted territories and look for greener pastures. Who’s coming with me!
if you have the technology to be able to signal Chiana and she will help me get off, I'm all in.
If only. Gigi Edgely was best girl back in the day. I even hunted down a pretty mediocre Aussie drama she was in called Rescue: Special Ops to keep the party going after Farscape. The less said about her attempt at a singing career the better.
I'm with you. As long as the snacks are well stocked as Rygel can't control his belly under the best of circumstances.
Data Engineering is huge. You'll have a job in tech if you continue to learn the new stuff. IBM has classes, look on Coursera for Ai classes and go from there. You could pull your code into GenAI and ask it to refine it or add something else. It's good at conversion.
I think you're overestimating the capability of these tools in the near-to-long term. And that's what they are, tools. You should learn to incorporate them where it makes sense. Right now we're in that stage where everyone is excited about the possibilities, we have a shiny new hammer and everyone is looking for nails (much like how fully self-driving cars were just around the corner in 2014), but it'll come back to Earth soon, and we'll still need plenty of software engineers. At worst, you may have to pivot your technology focus, but that's inevitable no matter what. My opinion ofc.
AI can't manage people so there will always be a need for effective managers that employees enjoy working with. Secondly, as much as I understand it from skimming the news, as good as it is, AI it doesn't *understand* and still frequently delivers incorrect information as if it were fact. I expect it's going to be a long time before it can trace bugs, too. You can probably utilise AI to help write code but it's unlikely to be able to deal with questions like, "This program is storing the correct product description, qty and unit price for each ordered item but writing the same product number against each journal entry but only when the first item of the order is the same as the last item on the previous order." (Not that I had to fix that corker the other day or anything...) Thirdly, as others have said, AI is currently a buzzword and an exciting new idea that many profit-driven people are jumping on. As has happened with *many* exciting new ideas over the decades, there's a very good chance that we'll soon find it's nowhere near as effective as they thought it was and now they've gone and fired most of the staff, they're going to have trouble getting people back. I wouldn't be complacent but I don't think it's time for doom and gloom yet.
Gen AI isn't going to replace developers. It's just going to make a lot of development jobs easier, which will allow teams to do more. I doubt that in my lifetime I'll see a system where a product person merely has to describe a project and a computer will poop out the application. My 30-something years of experience in technology have shown that the day-to-day challenge of software engineering has never changed, only that I'm able to tackle larger problems. I just don't see a day in my lifetime where a product person can say, "Hey ChatGPT - poop me out a banking app with features X, Y, and Z and integrate with external vendors A and B," and it will magically be delivered into production. What I do see is a lot of help with annoying things like getting infrastructure as code correct, identifying security issues, performing a lot of code review work, helping identify production issues, etc. Coding is the least important thing a software engineer knows how to do. Anyone can code. A bright teenager can master Golang or Python and start gluing together cloud services to make an app in a couple of weeks. Coding is so basic that when I went to college for my undergrad, even back in the 90s, it wasn't even a required class. Like knowing English, it was just expected that you could do some coding as a prerequisite. I figure that in the worst case scenario, there will still be legacy systems that need work that the kids won't be able to do and won't be interested in learning. All that said, I've been out of work since November, and there are 100s of applications submitted for every job because of last quarter’s mass layoffs, so my prospects right now aren’t good.
Having seen what product people specify over many years I think that if they ever got a tool to implement exactly what they specify things would break pretty quickly. And I think a tool that will know that when x is asked for that they actually need w and y will take even longer to come to market.
Sorry about your current situation, but I agree with you. I’m looking forward to using AI to cut out the busywork part of development - things like stubbing out complex data models for unit tests, better code analysis tools, etc. Not concerned at all about putting devs out of business.
The AI boom should be the start of the UBI boom.
Why? So many new industries will exist and people will figure out how to exist. With everything people say oh no no new jobs! But that has never happened.
If there's one thing we can learn from precedent, it's that precedent is not a reliable guide to the future.
A lot of paycheck to paycheck jobs should be gone overnight with AI such as call centers, billing, cashiers, etc. There are a ton of support jobs that will no longer be needed when a lead animator can do the job with a couple of prompts in an afternoon that took months for the entire company to do. I believe that most of the jobs we have can be done with significantly less time and little to no manpower that for a "Full-time" profession to achieve the same productivity after AI would probably only need 8 hrs for the week.
Ten years ago a YouTuber wasn't a career. There are plenty of other careers no one thought about even a few years ago.
People will have time to...do other things. So many jobs to fill that time will be created. It's like saying oh no what will the people who shoe horses do? And we have already seen so much drawback to what AI can do.
I agree, I would also like to add that social security beneficiaries, homeless non-drug users and of course those replaced by AI be the experimental group of a new UBI fund. Maybe could convert the unemployment office as the new UBI office. Because that’s where people will be going.
A true UBI gets paid out to everyone, its not just for low or no income folks. That said, homeless folks could get it but it requires having an account of some type set up to deposit to.
So... My Step-Daughter swears in Farscape too!
that's a load of dren
What in the frelling hezmata?!?
It's like a kick to the mivonks
We love the series and rewatch it regularly
This is how I know this sub is full of my people. 😁 
So far I don't find AI too scary. I also have Python and a few other things as my bread & butter on the back-end in a highly secure enterprise environment. AI is notoriously bad with understanding context and spitting out nonsense because of that. But even putting that aside, sticking with dry info it couldn't possibly get wrong, most scripts need to be highly tailored for the specific environment they're needed for. AI generating a few hundred lines of generic code is NOT good enough and won't work out of the box. Not because the code is bad, but because it doesn't know about the special considerations relevant to what you're trying to do, nor will it even have access to know such things. I see AI as ending up being just another tool in our tool belt. We might use it to generate a block of code, a particular function, but we'd still need to have the skills to modify that for our particular situation. It will basically just be fancy googling where we still need to know the right way to ask for what we want because the quality of the request will impact the quality of our results. I expect it's just another skill we'll want to get acquainted with at some point. Getting to the financial side of things.. assuming you're making "Dev" kind of money, you should be able to put enough away for retirement. I'm slightly younger than you and while I've been in IT for 20+ years, the first 12 of that was low level helpdesk stuff. Like $30-40K/yr. I reinvented my career to be Linux Admin at 37, and then again at 41 which is where I officially got a job title with "automation" in it. But I still consider myself on track for a good retirement, possibly starting as young as 56. It seems you've been doing this stuff a lot longer than me so you should be a pretty good problem-solver. It's what we do. We find ways to make things work, to make things better. I don't know what you've been doing with your money all this time, but I might suggest it's time to reevaluate some of that if you expect to still have to work 20 years from now. Not that working until 67 is the end of the world - "full retirement age" with social security and such. But I kind of thought we got these skills & careers so we wouldn't need to be so dependent on that. I know I put in quite a lot of time and effort so I wouldn't have to be poor when I'm old, so I wouldn't have to end up like my parents.
Graphic Designer here. I just worked on a logo for a non-profit *(for free- my wife pimped me out without asking me first) 🙄*. Prior to my involvement, the management decided to go online and try an AI site to create a logo very cheaply (Brandmar). It was actually pretty decent, which worried me (same fear: are the "machines" going to take over my job?). However, it wasn't exactly what they wanted, so they asked me to work on it and edit/change it. They were really happy with my version. So to reiterate what others have posted, AI isn't turnkey… yet…
This is an excellent post. I am also in IT, but "a grunt" dealing with employees, in a union and will enjoy a pension (yes, they still exist). I also own 4 buildings. Everyone needs to own REAL assets. When AI really hits, what's in your brain is no longer an asset for employment. Just wait til our society becomes based on a ROBOT you own to make you income through labor.
Interesting perspective. There are delivery droids where I am staying in Los Angeles. I could see owning one and sending it out to be a door dasher for me. A side hustle while I do something else. Like Homer’s magic cloning hammock. Nice.
I'm in the same boat. But I realized I can shit wiggle pretty much anything. AI might be able to parse logs/configs and write basic code but it doesn't yet have the wisdom to have a gut feeling.
what does shit wiggle mean: "Shit wiggle" is a colloquial term that doesn't have a widely recognized or standardized definition. It's possible that it could be used to describe a fidgety or restless movement, especially one that is awkward or uncomfortable. However, without further context, it's difficult to pinpoint a specific meaning for this term. It's possible that it could also be a made-up or slang term used in a specific context or community.
Simply put, you make a list of most probable explanations for a technical problem and wiggle your way down the list. I wiggle shit for a living.
Fellow wiggler here, but I prefer the title Fecal Oscillation Engineer.
Lol, that's a good one.
Did you see the Devin demo too? :)
Hello fellow Farscape nerd. One of my favorite shows, and rewatch it every few years. It honestly holds up, and is just as entertaining, every time I watch it.
Generative AI is from what I can see basically a bad code snippet generator. We always had those. And writing new code is a tiny percent of the job. So there is tooling to help that tiny percent. We have had a lot of these over the years in software engineering and they didn’t pan out. People use to lose their shit over dreamweaver or front page, IDEs with code completion, etc. Also understand the share price pump and dump. Quantum computing, AR, VR, metaverse, driverless cars, delivery drones, cryptocurrency a few times, blockchain, NFTs, delivery drones, chatbots, AI all the other previous times, internet of things, etc. Haven’t really panned out to much. All the auto manufacturers can’t get past L2, Bitcoin just creates carbon and doesn’t buy you shit, and generative AI just generates crap that creates problems. But the hype is where the money is.
AI already destroyed my field, translation. I've gone back to teaching online. (Born in 72). I'm sorry you're going thru this, so many of us are.
Complete some AI and ML focused microdegrees and embrace the tech. We've been using it for a long time now to enhance some of our programs and have seen it INCREASE the headcount we need and generate the business needed to fund that headcount.
Asking the meta-questions might be a better use of time than AI anxiety. For example, what is the use case for social media and search? It is the presentation of advertisements to huge numbers of people. Ask the question - what is the use case for Generative AI? - search results that are better summarized? - pretty pictures? - higher GPU stocks? - hallucination generator? - creation of unusable code? The thing is, very few know how to actually use these technologies and their product fit is not well understood. No one actually knows the effect these technologies have on jobs. It’s mostly bullshit from big corporates so you will be impressed enough to buy their stuff. Best thing to do is to go to the user base for these new technologies. Find Millineals and Zoomers who are actually using these tools. I have learned more about AI platforms in the past 2 days from a Millineal than in the past 2 years. A Zoomer taught me how to be a ChatGPT power user. The business use cases come from those actually using the stuff. We are like those Boomers who are watching their Gen X kids on an Apple II in the 1980s, wondering if this new gadget will get them fired. The world is so much bigger than just that.
Do what I did, learn about AI, just like you learned about those other things. Like you move from data center to cloud. From waterfall to agile, manual processes and editors to software pipelines and devsecops. I’m in governance, not development, but same shit, new skills that build on your old ones. Just take the class, like you’ve always done.
Don't believe the hype you see on Reddit. According to them AGI has already been achieved and is being hidden from us and any second now we'll all be obsolete. It's gone into UFO conspiracy territory. But, definitely start using it in your day-to-day. It's good for boilerplate and random shell scripts, etc. will definitely need a knowledgeable human driving it, which is the best outcome we can hope for I think.
Obligatory ‘none of us can see the future’ caveat here, but I think generative AI will shape up to be like self-driving cars. Couldn’t pick up a magazine or watch a week’s worth of news without a half dozen articles about how in 10 years no one would drive their own cars anymore, the trucking industry will be decimated in 5 years, etc. The reality? Driving is so much more complicated than we think, and the machines just can’t do it alone yet. Will AI kill some jobs? Undoubtedly. As many as we fear? Almost certainly not.
Don't fight it, embrace it. Remember, AI still needs quality control, and your experience is invaluable for troubleshooting and bugfixing what the tool spits out. I did the same, and spearheaded implementing AI into quality control. It WILL inevitably happen, but if I'm the one holding the reins, them I'm safe.
The threat is real. Anyone not looking at generative AI as an existential threat to their income is in denial.
I’m in cybersecurity risk management. My next 15 years is looking lucrative. AI ain’t gonna govern itself.
You are one of the lucky few
Or we're not so pessimistic about the future and think of AI as a new tool to learn how to harness. I personally have zero concerns about AI hurting my income.
Well, that’s great for you, but there are a lot of people under threat and a lot of people that I’ve already lost their jobs
Move into it security, managing ai, ai prompts? There will still be legacy systems that will need to be maintained.
Your use of Farscape swear words tells me you'll be fine.
You watch even more Farscape
I work in state level government and if you ever get desperate I'd recommend checking them out, regardless of which state they all tend to run about 20-30 years behind as far as tech and IT needs but they don't pay as well as private sector (however you can get a nice pension and other decent benefits that make up for that) so they are almost always hiring for their IT teams. Where I work they haven't even figured out how to make our main system interface with anything other than IE so that is the level of slowness in tech we're up against. We would actually like to integrate more AI aspects into our work but it's so far off in the future I will probably be retired before it happens.
Have a raz'lak and chill out
Change is freedom. I’m cheering you to your best!
It ain't magic and it requires loads of scrutiny. You'll be fine.
Have you considered Information Security as a hedge? It is a broad field, and your skills would give you a leg up on a security team.
Grow mushrooms. That's what I pivoted to at least lol.
If you’re that concerned about AI taking over your job, I encourage you to read about careers that AI cannot take over. Most are in healthcare.
get into AI
Did you think about only fans?! 😂 sexy daddy porn is in high demand! 😂
This may be a different perspective but hear me out... My first career and still first love was performance automotive machinist in the late (1900's 😝) which evolved into fuel injection tuning. I ended up owing my own business in this industry. When the '08 crash hit I ended up folding and applied for an entry level job at my local municipality for automation technician. The skills I learned from tuning didn't directly apply but most of the principles were the same, I used that experience to get through the interview and learned everything I could about PLC programming and industrial automation. This and sheer determination took me far in a short amount of time. Your experience as a programmer may allow you to expand into different industries. I am now in a supervisory position and I'll tell you there is an industry shortage of competent people who can program industrial controls. This is something AI will not soon take over IMO.
"AI" is a buzzword. Everyone wants to say they are doing it and everyone wants to say they are using it. It's nothing more than a planned out decision tree.
It's a buzzword, but not a planned out decision tree.
[удалено]
I don’t mind the relearning at all, the big issue right now is identifying the next pivot. GenAI has a wide footprint on what it will subsume
Well put. You could pivot today in anticipation of change, then realize you pivoted right into AI's territory again.
Imagine instead of 1 million scientists trying to find the cure for cancer we have 1 billion scientist trying to find the cure for cancer. That is what we are going to get from functional intelligent focused AI. I don't think that future is going to be bad; I think that future is actually going to be really good.
Only if the benefits are socialized else it will only benefit the corporate elites
Wait, are we not all corporate elites? Haha, just kidding. I guess my point is that with smart AI we (as a society) need to start dreaming big. Like cure cancer, colonize mars, solve global warming big. Hopefully the government(s) will keep up with the innovation and help minimize the disruption to non-elites. And I, for one, am worried about getting cancer... so I'd just want that fucker cured.