ai2 - Expansion. Not Replacement.

Clarifying my last post.

I think I was unclear in my last post about AI. Many people thought that I had went full doomer on AI and that I was fearful that ai was going to destroy us all. I want to be more clear.

This is the most fun that I have had in years.

And as I use these ai tools more and read history more the more I realize that:

Ai isn’t replacement. It’s expansion.

Let’s go back to the example I used of my fathers job. He was a skill trades tool and die marker at General Motors. Yes, his job did change and get automated. Tasks that used to take hours, could now be done in minutes or seconds. It meant that my dad’s job had to change.

The workers now would be focused on programming, designing, inventing the cars. And this allowed the car to be made much more affordably which meant that more people were able to afford them. The total market for cars expanded and simultaneously, the technology in the car got better and better.

The car got safer with inventions like lane assistance sensors, intelligent airbags, automatic emergency braking, blind spot monitoring, and adaptive cruise control.

Those inventions and advancements all required humans to make them. They just weren’t on the line doing back breaking dangerous work, they were in offices using their brains to invent new technologies that made all our lives better.

I have to remind myself that jobs are created and destroyed every minute. And that many of the jobs that I am nostalgic about were not that great.

Does anyone really miss working in a mine shaft far from their family with a real fear of death at any moment? I don’t think so. Similarly, with grinding metal in an auto factory.

My post last week wasn’t to say that I am fearful of ai. I was hoping to convey that I understand why people are fearful. That I too am fearful. And as my business coach, Dino likes to say. “It’s not change that people fear. It’s loss.”

I was fearful that I was losing my purpose. My profession. My “edge”. I try to remind myself that we have seen this before. In the 2000’s I was working at a desktop software company and when mobile technology exploded, many of us software people feared that desktop software was dead. But we were dead wrong (Punny?).

In reality, desktop usage has stayed steady and slightly increased since then. While mobile usage also surged from 1 hour a day usage to now an average of 4 hours. Again, it wasn’t replacement. It was expansion. And TechSmith still sells Snagit and Camtasia desktop software today!

It was natural for a desktop software maker to fear that mobile was going to steal all their jobs and revenue. But that’s usually not what happens. It is just hard to see the future. It was hard to see that we would be able to hail a cab, identify stars, fly a drone, and identify skin cancer with mobile phones.

Technology enables so many things that have never existed before that it makes them hard to imagine. Around the time of WW2, electricity was far less common in German homes. German prisoners of war that came to America would write letters amazed by the technology that they saw in America.

They would go through cities fascinated by the lights, because at this time about 80% of American homes had electricity. Lights to read by, washing machines, refrigerators, electric stoves, and vacuum cleaners.

So in closing. I’m sorry that my last post made people think I was fearful of ai.

The truth is that I’ve been staying up late and waking up early to play with these tools.

It has NEVER been more fun to build. I am designing websites, applications… I’m creating more than I ever have. Even my 7 year old now has his own website and 2 video games that he created.

ai didn’t replace software developers, it means that we are now ALL software developers!

These tools make what was a skill only a few were able to use to now anyone can use them.

It reminds me of the Computer. There used to be rooms full of people that would spend their entire day computing equations like artillery firing tables during WWII or plotting rocket trajectories for NASA space missions. Computer was a job title.

But then the computer machine came along. Those people still existed but they now were able to use a computer machine to process even more data. Computing didn’t go away, we got way more computing that we ever had before.

This is all to say, I’m sorry that my post last week scared some. That wasn’t my intent. I would say that 90% of the time I am absolutely in love with ai and the opportunities and possibilities that it presents. But I did want to be honest and confess that I too sometimes wake up with a fear that I am being replaced. And that is totally natural and human.

What do you think? Am I off base? How are you feeling about ai?