AI takes

I’ve been trying to lovingly craft a post to convey my thoughts about AI, but I’ve been struggling to get it written because my feelings keep changing as often as the models. I’ve ditched that idea and decided to just share what’s on my mind right now and put it out there. 

Believe the hype. This is no fad. The wheel is not doomed. This is a massive technology revolution and we’re only just leaving the station on the S curve line. We can't fathom the AI endgame right now. 

Sometimes I feel upbeat because of the potential of accelerated learning, cures for disease, having my own C3PO homebot, and the end to all those repetitive, boringly time-consuming tasks. 

Sometimes I feel crushed because the world’s information has been illegally hoovered up by powerful machines controlled by unfathomably rich and possibly sketchy dudes. That’s not a good thing and this isn’t a good thing either. It’s definitely not good for the climate. 

There will still be lots of jobs, but to get hired you'll need to be skilled in the domain as well as skilled in leveraging AI. This is hard work because of its rapid evolution. It will require continuous learning as well as unlearning. The onus is on the individual.

It can seem like magic but we need to remain skeptical. Coding agents will build what you want, but it won't be a novel solution (yet). There will be a better, more elegant approach. LLMs will quickly flesh out or review your writing, but it will homogenise it. There will be better, more elegant prose. We should try and prevent the AIs from stealing it.

We need to remain vigilant against the AI goliaths to protect our privacy. We've watched as Google and Meta learned everything about us, AI will take this to the next level. You are still the product. There are privacy-focused LLM options out there to use.

The technology has landed and we're right to embrace it, but our right to privacy must be non-negotiable.