Part 1, ended with a rather sad premise that tech companies will bring AI to every aspect of our lives whether we want or not. This can lead to questions about the point of spending years learning how to do coding, art, or animations? What's the point of putting effort into the craft if you can just write a prompt and get stuff better than some with years of experience in given fields?
Data show that more young people depend on AI. You need some school paper? You just ask AI. You need to do some coding? Asking AI. You need a CV that will pass all automated recruitment systems? You ask AI. You need a friend's advice? Talk with AI. You need mental help? Talk with AI. You need a partner? Talk with AI.
This is a perfect situation for some tech companies, others try to catch up and put AI into everything (Toilets including). We do that because AI sells. It's a promise of the simple life where everything is within reach of your hand. Minimal effort, quick results, high return.
This even sounds like a marketing slogan:
AI makes things that felt impossible within the reach of your hand.
I'm currently reading an interesting book about marketing by Rory Sutherland: Alchemy.
It touches a lot of interesting problems of marketing that I never thought about. He discusses there a lot how companies are too focused on optimisations, numbers, and saving money.
"Today, the principal activity of any publicly held company is rarely the creation of products to satisfy a market need. Management attention is instead largely directed towards the invention of plausible-sounding efficiency narratives to satisfy financial analysts, many of whom know nothing about the businesses they claim to analyse, beyond what they can read on a spreadsheet."
Alchemy, Roth Suterland
He also points out something so oblivious that the world is not only numbers and savings, and that there is also no single solution, or in his words: "The opposite of a good idea can also be a good idea", and there is something about it. If there were a single source of truth, we would already found it.
Now you can think why I mentioned all of it in the topic of AI, Technology, and White Rabbit Engine? Because what he writes can be applied outside of marketing. I believe that AI is not a solution to anything. It is just another tool. You could compare it to the invention of programming languages, which was just an evolution of assembly.
My look at it is partially influenced by a video from a Disney 2D animator who said:
"I think people, anytime new technology comes along they see it as a threat and they. You know you get kind of territorial about what you're doing and you think it's going to be taken away but rather than do that because you're not going to stop technology. Try to embrace it, what can it do to help you, how can you learn from it."
Arron Blaise
His whole video you can find here, this quote you can find somewhere around 17:30.
Still, for a lot of managers and companies, AI is another buzzword like social, blockchain, NFT, and crypto. People were forced to implement it into the product even if they did not want to. What is, in my opinion, different about AI is that it impact work of people and not necessarly the good way. People are getting fired because of the premise that AI will be capable of doing their job, even if, in a lot of cases, this is just a misunderstanding of what people do. In the case of developers, a lot of people think that we create source code. But in the university, I learned that coding is just a cherry on top of the cake. What we do is solve the problems that are put in front of us. In my case, I can solve the same problem using C++, C#, Python, Java, and with a little bit of practice in any other language, even the most archaic ones.
Some companies are in some way forced to replace people with AI. Investors seen news about other companies saving money using AI, and they demand the same from their company. Others do it on their own as managers want to show savings, and the most costly resource in the majority of companies is people. This sadly led to cuts in the staff and often juniors, whose jobs can often be more easily replaced by AI. There is only one problem with this approach: there would be no Seniors without Juniors.
In the end, all of that adds up and leads to the feeling of misery and pointlessness. I don't know how you feel about it, but I have more than 15 years of experience in programming, and it sometimes hits me hard. What's the point of doing what I do? What is even more terrifying is the fact that if this is how I feel, I can only imagine what young people feel ...
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