Latest / DevQuestions with Tim Corey / 277. The Future of AI and What It Means For Developers

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277. The Future of AI and What It Means For Developers · DevQuestions with Tim Corey

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: AI is changing all the time.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: New applications, new models, and new integrations happen so frequently, you've probably lost track of all the changes just in your own workflow.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: But let's take a step back and look at AI adoption as a whole.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Let's look at how companies are starting to use AI, how AI is impacting jobs in general, as well as specifically developers, and let's talk about how to position yourself to succeed in this new and changing market.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Software development is more than just writing code.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about the rest of it.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Specifically, let's talk about what the future of AI is and what it means for developers.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to break this into three sections.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: What is happening with AI?
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Why companies are pushing AI forward, and finally, how can we, as developers and future developers, use this information to our advantage?
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: So let's start with what's happening with AI.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you've probably seen it, but let's categorize it.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: So, number one, new models are coming out very frequently.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: But if you notice, those new models aren't quite as revolutionary as previously, previous versions seemed to be.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: For example, GPT-5 came out not that long ago, and it was touted as this major step forward, this major model.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: And when people used it, they went, eh, okay, yeah, there's some changes, there's some benefits, but it also seemed like it regressed into other areas.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: And every company is working to find that new model, that new pot of gold that everyone flocks to and says this is the thing.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now that's one thing.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, seemingly every company is integrating AI into their product somehow.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: So an example of this I've seen recently was that a company put AI into their workflow.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: So they had this whole workflow process.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: I was talking to somebody that was working on that workflow, and they said that they were called in because the workflow was buggy and slow.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: And they found that the company had integrated AI into that workflow, even though it really was just making a decision based upon a set of criteria.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: So they took the AI out and just created a decision engine based upon that set of criteria.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden it now runs very, very fast and predictably.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: But companies are trying to do it anyways.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: They're trying to stick to AI in, even in places that don't really make sense.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Now, number three, more companies are inserting an AI chatbot between you and a real person.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: This is super frustrating.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Most of our vendors, it seems, have an AI chat bot of some type.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I have yelled at more than a few because you ask it a question and it gives you either a generic answer or it gives you an answer that doesn't really make sense and it doesn't understand what you're asking for.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: You have to ask for in different ways.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: And you give it information and it seemingly doesn't remember that information.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's really, really frustrating.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: And more and more this is happening, more and more places where I will go ahead to customer service and I get a chat bot instead.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: Where it says I'm talking to a person, but the more I talk to them, the more I realize this isn't the person.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: This is AI.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it's happening more and more.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: And we're going to talk about why next, but this is what's happening.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: This is the state of AI, right?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then finally, more and more the internet is AI-generated slop.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: I like to cook in my spare time.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, I'm cooking tonight, after this.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I enjoy looking up new recipes and finding new ways to cook and new things to cook.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: And really part of it is kind of self-serving.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: I want something new.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so I said, you know, instead of trying to make somebody else do this, I'm going to figure out how to do this.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I enjoy it.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I am constantly on a search for a new recipe or a new way of doing things.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I was reading through a recipe where the picture, which a picture is worth a thousand words of recipes, the picture looked great.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I started reading through the recipe, and it starts with the ingredients.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I looked at the ingredients list, and I'm not a professional chef.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not more than barely an amateur chef.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: But when I look at that list, I know those ingredients don't match that picture.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, they don't match the title of what it says.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: The title matched the picture, but the ingredient list didn't match the title or the picture.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then I started to see throughout the recipe, they were using ingredients that weren't on the ingredient list.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it kind of looked like a mix of two different recipes.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: And the very end of it, after I'd gone through the history of this dish and the backstory of the person who wrote the article and all the rest of the stuff, so I could get through all those different ads, which is the whole point of those.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: We get down to the very bottom, it says this recipe was generated by AI.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: They were being up, well, not up front, but at the bottom, but saying, hey, yeah, we we generate this by AI.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's not how recipes work.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: You can't just generate a new recipe with AI and expect it to actually taste good or work.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: But there's more and more of that we see, right?
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: You see more and more blog posts where you're like, I'm pretty sure this is just AI generated.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: And you see more and more things where it sounds great until you actually try to use it and you're like, wait, that doesn't work.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's right.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because the thing I was basing my information off of was AI generated.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, Sam Altman is the founder or CEO of the open AI system.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: He's even concerned about the dead internet theory, the idea that more of the Internet is computer-generated.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's not even human-generated anymore.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's what AI is doing.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: People are using AI to create more and more AI-generated slop.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what's happening with AI.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of negatives inside that.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: Now there are a lot of positives as well, but that's kind of where we're at as an industry.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: We're creating new models and new systems to use those models.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: We seemingly every company wants to integrate AI itself into their product line.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: More companies are using AI chatbots, and more and more the internet is AI-generated slop.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now, also, as developers, more and more of our workflow is aided by AI as well.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: But beyond what is happening, I think it's extremely important to understand why it is happening.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: So let's go back through that list again and talk about why might this be the case.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Why might it be that each of these is happening?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: So new models.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: New models are being created all the time.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: But why?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's where eventually the money will be, in theory.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the key thing here, is we are on we are on the cusp of a new technology.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so there is basically a whole bunch of companies losing money to try and get to the point where they make money.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: Amazon lost money quarter after quarter.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: We used to laugh at Amazon because they were losing money so often.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: We don't laugh at Amazon anymore because they make money.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: They were the ones that that secured the beachhead.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: They're the ones that held off everybody else and became the winner, the company that eventually made money after losing money for so long.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, AI companies are trying to do the same thing.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: They're trying to secure the beachhead.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: They're trying to secure the this is the model that wins.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: This is the AI that is the AI to solve all the problems.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because right now, pretty much every company is losing money on every AI product, especially AI models.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: AI models are very expensive to make.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: They're very expensive to run.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you make a call at ChatGPT, especially the free version, well, you're not paying for that.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: Or even if you are paying, you're not paying nearly what it costs in most cases.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: So at some point that has to change, right?
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: At some point we have to either bring the costs down or we have to bring up the charges, right?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: And companies are waiting to do that until they can establish that they're the market leader, and then they can be the one that sets the pricing.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: And they can be the one that gets the economy of scale and all the rest.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: So that rush to the new model, they're rushing to find what's that perfect model?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: What's the one that's going to be the thing that takes over the entire market?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: And at first, um OpenAI had the best model.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, GPT, when it first came out, was the leader of all AI models, and it looked like they were going to be the solution.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: They were going to be the place to go for the new model.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: And when GPT-3 came out in 3.5 and 4, like we were looking at them saying, hey, you're the market leader, but that's of course changed.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: And there are a number of different models, and there are a number of different competitors for that, which really is going to mean that these companies have to fight harder to figure out how to establish that beachhead and make it profitable.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what companies are doing when they're creating the models.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: But let's talk now about the next category, which is companies that are integrating AI into their products.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Why are they doing that?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, because they're terrified of being left behind.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: And a number of companies, CEOs and CTOs, and others have admitted this.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: They say, I don't understand AI, but I know we need to have it in our product.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: And the, you know, as a lay person, you might say, well, why is that?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they're terrified of being left behind.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: Whenever there's a new technology, if it's going to be revolutionary, then it's going to leave other things behind.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: Here's an example that we can probably relate with.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, when the car industry comes along, you don't want to be left holding these stables because you're going to have less and less value as a company because your product is less and less needed in the current society.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: You want to be on the cutting edge.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: You want to be opening up garages for cars.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: You want to be opening up shops to work on cars.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: You want to be opening up car dealerships.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: You want to be moving into that new industry.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the same is true for AI.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: Companies are trying to figure out how do we use AI to make us a better product compared to our competitors?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because maybe you're the market leader right now, but if your competitor comes along and creates a product that is similar to yours, but AI-powered, it might launch itself beyond yours, and all of a sudden you've lost market share.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: So really, it's fear driving companies to put AI into everything.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: They're trying to not be left behind while not understanding how to move forward.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now, number three, companies are using AI chatbots because they're cheap.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because they're trying to get more money for less cost.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: So when you say, hey, I could create a chatbot that is better at answering questions than a human is, or even as good, or close to as good, then yes, I want to do that because in theory that's seen as free or at least much cheaper than the human workforce needed to do actual customer service.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: Now we have seen the tide turning back because companies are realizing that it doesn't work.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh Clarno is a great example.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: They're kind of market leaders in replacing people with AI, and now they're replacing AI with people.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, every company is trying this because every company wants to think that they can have better customer support for less money.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's their goal.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that's understandable.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: If if you could have more for less, you would do it, right?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you could say, I want to have more food in my house for less money, that sounds like a great deal.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Or I want to have more gasoline for my car for less money, that sounds awesome.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: And we do that all the time.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: We shop for better deals.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, companies are no different.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so the thought process is that hey, if we can use an AI system to replace humans and get a better result, or even the same result for less money, then we'll do so.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: Now, back to point one those AIs aren't going to be cheap forever.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that's gonna be a big danger for the companies who are integrating AIs and the companies who are relying on AIs for things like chatbots, because at some point, those costs are probably gonna go up.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden, it might be cheaper to bring humans back in.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: But that's another story.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why companies are integrating AI chatbots in other chat systems and other ways to kind of insulate them from you, because the more they insulate them from you, uh, the cheaper it is for them.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, and then finally, you know, with the AI slop on the internet, people are trying to get rich quick.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that has not changed because that's always been the case.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: People have always tried to find an angle or a system or a way to get rich quick.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: And typically that doesn't work, right?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it really is kind of the gold rush mentality.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: You've got one person that finds a gold nugget in a stream, and all of a sudden you have 100,000 people panning for gold in that stream.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe they pull out a couple more nuggets, but that's about it.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: But you can see the winners and see, see, it paid off for somebody, therefore I'll do it too.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's what the people on the internet are doing.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: They're looking to very quickly create that recipe site and say, hey, you know what?
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna create 50,000 recipes and have 10 different recipe sites.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to generate ad revenue in all of those.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: And because I have these 10 different sites and I'm playing them off against each other, and I'm moving up the ranking in Google, and I'm moving up the ranking in AI searches as well, all of a sudden now you've got more ad revenue and you become a success.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: But that's kind of built on a shaky foundation where the more people see what it is, the more they reject your sites, and the more you move down the rankings, you bring a new site online in order to try and combat that.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it becomes this job of trying to scam people out of their time or money.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's always been the case, even before AI.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it will continue to be the case with AI.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: AI is going to help people scam people easier, but it's still going to be a get-rich quick scheme.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now, there's also the idea that some people build like a software as a service without actually having a development experience.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen a number of these, and quite frankly, it terrifies me because the number of applications I've seen built like that that have then lost all their company data or they've exposed their users to the scary world of hackers and barely hackers because that the data is unprotected.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's a significant portion.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: So understanding how an application works is kind of important for building an actual product and taking customer information, customer data.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of work that goes into it.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the kind of the why.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's really driven a lot of times by money, a misunderstanding, and fear.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like money because they want, you know, when they're building a model, they want to have the model that makes all the money.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's you know, integrating AI because they're scared of how it's going to get how it's going to leave them behind if they don't, and money because if they can integrate that chatbot, they can replace people or reduce their costs, and money to get rich quick on the Internet.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: So this is the why.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now let's work on setting ourselves up for success in this crazy time right now, this churn.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Right now we're going through the rapids of a river.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's up and down and around, and there's splashing, and there's there's danger, and there's rocks, and there's all these other things we have to avoid and be careful of while at the same time moving through it, because we have to move through it.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: So, how do we set ourselves up for success in this changing market?
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think the way forward is actually rather clear.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: But first, I want to share with you a few predictions from the past that will help you understand the way forward for AI.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: So in 1920, the Ladies Home Journal claimed that household applications would save you, I'm sorry, household appliances would save you over 18 hours per week.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: So your washer, your dryer, your dishwasher, your oven.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: These are going to save you over 18 hours per week.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if you use any of those appliances, I want to ask you a question.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: Do you feel like you have 18 hours of the week that you're just not working because you have all this free time?
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: I bet you don't.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: I bet you feel like you put an awful lot of work into those appliances.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: You do an awful lot of things around using those appliances, and it feels like it, there's no extra free time anywhere.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like we're not just saying, hey, you know what, this is my 18 hours of free time per week because I did the laundry.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's not how that feels.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Now, also in the 1920s, it was predicted that cars would make commuting so efficient that people could live in the country and still work in the city.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that was true.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: But the the word efficient is a little incorrect here.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because yes, that's true.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so what happens now is you spend more time in our cars.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: So instead of making us more efficient, like cutting down on something, what actually did was it increased something.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Now, instead of having a short commute, we have a longer commute.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we might drive up to an hour to a job.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that takes two hours of your day, you know, there and back, on top of whatever you spend at your job.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: It makes things harder and longer and more difficult, not easier.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in the 1930s, John Mayer-Keynes predicted a 15-hour work week by the year 2000 because of machine automation.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he looked at factories and looked at all our systems and said, hey, these things are going to be able to make our lives easier, and pretty soon we'll have a 15-hour work week.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't think that has hit anywhere yet.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, in some places, it actually makes it a 15-hour day, not work week.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um because yes, those machines do exist.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, we have automated systems, and yes, we have things that that um make our lives in theory easier.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um but really what happens is we do other work around those systems, and instead of having a 15-hour work week, we are working overtime.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in the 1960s, IBM said that computers would make paperwork obsolete and lead to a paperless office.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we still have paper.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: We still have lots of paper.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: And the office is still filled with paperwork.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, we do a lot of things digitally, but it feels like we added that on top of paperwork in a lot of ways rather than replacing paperwork.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: So we we still have some paperwork, and we have less, but we also then have a lot more digital work.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in the 1990s, this is getting more current here, email was touted as the faster alternative to postal mail, which it is.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it was said that email would reduce wasted time and increase productivity.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: Let me ask you, when you look at your email inbox, do you look at that and say, man, that saved me so much time this week?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: I I I love the fact that I have email because it's just it saves me so much time.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: Or do you look at your inbox and go, oh man, I gotta go through that thing again.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um like it's a drain on your time.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: It feels like it's a time.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Time sync.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: And yet it really is more efficient than writing letters, right?
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yes, but we're writing more emails than we ever would have a letter.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot more going on with email.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: It takes a lot more of our time, even though it's making us more efficient.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: So why don't I bring up these five examples?
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I wanted to get you kind of in the perspective of how technologies actually affect us.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, what do all these innovations have in common?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: They all did provide amazing improvements in efficiency.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: They all did, they all of them did that.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: The washing machine, the uh automation in in factories and email, and you know, all these things made us more efficient.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: And they changed how our society operated.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: However, they also didn't leave a gap of free time in their wake.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's like trying to put a hole in water.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: You might pull something out of water and say, well, there's there's less, you know, there's less things in the water, therefore it's being a hole, right?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's just gonna kind of fill in.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now, of course, the water level is down a little bit, but you know, that's how it works with time.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: How we spend our time might change, but time-saving innovation actually ends up taking up the very time that was supposed to save.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: So email, it saves us time, but because of that, we do more of it.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: Your cell phone, you know, it's supposed to save you time by not having to go to your go to your you know wall and pick up the actual phone call and make a call.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: And texting saves you time compared to making a call.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: But what ends up happening, we spend more time doing more texts.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: We spend more time doing more things on our phone, and it consumes more of our time.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: So even though it is adding efficiency, even though it's providing amazing improvements, it's also taking up more time, not really less.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: So we look at AI and how it's changing our industry.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think there are three things we need to do based upon looking at AI as another one of these innovations.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna make a change, it's gonna make an impact, it's gonna make a shift in how we do work.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, number one, I think we need to understand how to use AI to our advantage.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: I have seen people say, I'm gonna put my head under a rock, this AI thing is stupid.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: If you're talking about AI, that's dumb because everyone's talking about AI, and I think we just need to avoid that and just get the job done.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's gonna be the person who says, I'm just gonna clean the stables out because you know the stables is the way to go, and this whole car thing is gonna go away.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's not.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna get left behind if you do that.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: So you need to understand how to use AI to your advantage.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that does not mean understand every AI, it does not mean understand every new model and understand how to use every single tool, but it means understand the basics and having a good perspective on AI.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now, number two, I think we should be improving our skills outside of AI.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: This is one of the areas that I'm very disappointed in a lot of companies, tech companies, and including Microsoft.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: I went to Microsoft Build this past year and I was talking to another person, I said, you know what?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: If you removed every session that had the word AI in it, you would have a couple of sessions, and that's it for the whole conference.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas if you went back two, three, four years ago, if you removed every session that had the word AI in it, you'd have a full conference still.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: So all those things are still needing to happen.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: All those other innovations, other changes, other ways of doing things still need to happen.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so one of the areas that people are gonna get left behind as well is they focus just on AI, like all these companies are doing because they're trying to sell something.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but because they focus just on AI, well, you don't know how to actually use the tools better or use the language better or have more options for doing things.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: And you rely more and more on the AI, which can be and is wrong a lot.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: So improving your skills outside of AI is going to help you better use and take advantage of AI.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's step one.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: So step two is improving your skills outside of AI to then make step one even better.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: So that's step one and step two.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: Number three is to learn to separate the hype from the value.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: There is a tremendous amount of hype around AI.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: Every time there's a new model release, it's the best thing ever.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it's revolutionary, it's gonna change the world.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: Not really.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's probably a lot more incremental than you might think.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: And when you start to use it, you start to realize oh, yeah, it's impressive when you look at it from a distance.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: But when you get close to it, it's not quite as impressive as all that.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: And when you start to see that, you start to realize that you can go the other way too far, which is all of this is just baloney and it's ridiculous.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna ignore all of it.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want to do that, but you need to learn how to separate the hype from the value.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: There is new value being added all the time.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: Learn to take advantage of that while not falling for the hype train of going too far.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's the way forward for us as developers is to understand how to use AI to our advantage, improve our skills outside of AI so we can better utilize the AI, and then learn to separate the hype from the value.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: So people will be left behind in this shift.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: I am on record of saying AI is gonna add new software development jobs, and it will, and it has.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: But it's also gonna remove some jobs.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking about the overall averages are going to go up.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: But averages are kind of hiding the individual changes.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: Some companies are going to try to cut back because they want to save money.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: But other companies are gonna add.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: So there will be jobs added, there will be jobs removed.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: People are going to be left behind if they don't get on board, if they don't figure out how to work with AI.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: People are gonna lose their jobs because companies are always looking for ways to cut back to provide similar products for less cost.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's going to happen.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: AI is going to change how the industry works, just like automation or cars, or computers, or email and how they did previously.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: But AI is also gonna create a lot of opportunities for developers who change with the times.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: The end result is going to be more development jobs, but they're gonna look different than they do today.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: Adjusting now will greatly improve your odds of success in the future.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: All right, thanks for listening.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: And as always, I am Tim Corey.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us for this episode of Dev Questions.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: When you're ready to learn to think and code like a professional developer, head over to IamtimCorey.com and enroll in a course.