I appreciate these kind of fact-based posts. Thank you for this.
Unfortunately, AI seems to be divisive. I hope we will find our way back eventually. I believe the lessons from this era will reverberate for a long time and all sides stand to learn something.
As for me, I can’t help but notice there is a distinct group of developers that does not get it. I know because they are my colleagues. They are good people and not unintelligent, but they are set in their ways. I can imagine management forcing them to use AI, which at the moment is not the case, because they are such laggards. Even I sometimes want to “confront” them about their entire day wasted on something even the free ChatGPT would have handled adequately in a minute or two. It’s sad to see actually.
We are not doing important things and we ourselves are not geniuses. We know that or at least I know that. I worry for the “regular” developer, the one that is of average intellect like me. Lacking some kind of (social) moat I fear many of us will not be able to ride this one out into retirement.
> because they are such laggards
I am a technologist. But I am seriously concerned about the ecological consequences of the training and usage of AI. To me, the true laggards are those, who have not understood yet, that climate change requires a prudent use of our resources.
I don't mind people having fun or being productive with AI. But I do mind it when AI is presented as the only way of doing things.
I get that, I do. I hate to say it, but our entire civilization is about not giving a damn about resources. Cars, flying on holidays, industrialization in general I guess. Many things are a ridiculous waste of resource if you think about it.
The counter here would be, what if AI could be made efficient? Suddenly OK then? Is it truly about the resources?
Walking to the nearest farm with my horse is much, much more sustainable than maintaining a sprawling toxic civilizational level infrastructure so I can go into my car to the supermarket. I get your point, but nearly every aspect of our world is filled to the brim with mind boggling complexity and corresponding resource usage and we get used to it.
Don't waste time thinking about the comment you replied to.
Only an AI would bother to create a throwaway account to post such a shallow comment that is mostly fearmongering to push people to use AI.