It's pretty clear to me that the future of AI isn't what the hype train says it is. The conversation keeps focusing on job replacement, which people are either too excited about or deeply worried about. The social media platforms are serving it up en masse. Everyone wants to know "When will AI take my job?" I've spent billions of tokens automating a ton of work. AI has already enhanced everything I do, and you know what? I'm not worried about getting automated. The AIs should be worried about me, not the other way around. First, you should be asking Which skills should I hand over to AI, and which ones become more valuable? What AIs Do Better Humans doing research? data analysis? hand coding? Those days are numbered. AI can process thousands of variables in seconds and surface insights that would take humans days or weeks to uncover. What Humans Do Better Interpreting that data? Making decisions based on context, experience, and intuition? Understanding what the data means for your specific situation? AI's can give you a billion lame or wrong options (and I have the billions of spent tokens to prove it). They have a hard time deciding whether those options are any good. They keep quitting, giving you mediocre results and confidently telling you that they've finished something they didn't do. It's not getting better. Right now, the hottest skill isn't prompting, is being able to evaluate and direct the work that AIs perform, figuring out systems that automate jobs and build processes that controls the pipelines. Think of data analysis, that job was never about knowing which SQL commands to run or how to structure a database query. It's always been about extracting the right signals to make decisions. It's knowing which questions to ask, understanding business context, recognizing which patterns matter for your specific situation. If you thought it was about the SQL, you've been misled. AI can generate infinite dashboards and correlations. Without human judgment on what matters, you get technically accurate but marginally useful outputs. Some people truly believe that there's a world where computers just take over and we do nothing. Sigh. That's not going to age well, It's wrong and honestly...completely insane. The future belongs to people who can: - Frame the right questions - Interpret AI outputs through a human lens - Make decisions with incomplete information - Understand purpose and business context AI just made that more obvious. So don't be the person that is scared of being replaced by AI, be the person AI should be scared about. Because you know how to keep it so busy, it won't have time to think about taking over the world. Go get it!
It's always been about the design and the structure of the things we build, not really the building materials themselves. In the coming era I think engineers will be much more focused on the outcomes of what the AI creates, not the creation - that's the whole theory of why I built Aria - its a programming language just for AI assistants and LLMs to be more efficient. Meant for them, not for us, so we can focus on the design going in, and the outcome it delivers.
I'm not worried about what AI can do, I'm worried about the C-suite and the shareholders axing my post in favor of an AI because they THINK it can do my job, and I haven't even gotten a proper job yet. TL:DR, Never Underestimate the Depths of greed and stupidity that shareholders can drop to.
So true! What a great line and perspective“The AIs should be worried about me, not the other way around.“
Great insights Ray 👍
This is a refreshing take on AI. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Midwest CAD Solutions•993 followers
5dThis is great that you have this comparative analysis. We really need to put a lot more behind AI governance. With everybody leaping ahead at the moment, we are learning from a lot of cautionary tales. Primary of these is that as easy as it is to build something helpful with AI, so is it easy for bad actors to design an AI predator. You see this playing out with the ATS quagmire at the moment. So yes, it's all great, though put the devil's advocate hat on as one more piece in the AI Governance before green lighting for prime time.