#71-AI: Scaling Our Effort

People fear being replaced by AI.  Should they?  This episode will examine why this concern may not be as founded as people think, at least when it comes to industries I am familiar with.

Transcript

AI - Scaling Our Effort

I started this series by mentioning that I tend to provide office hours to my students when teaching my courses, either virtually or face to face. I also mentioned that recently the concept of artificial intelligence has come up many times in those conversations, where the student will express concern about their future employment, whether they will be employed, or what the nature of their job will be in the coming years. 

But this is not the first time this has happened. Years ago, as you may recall, there was a large push in our industry to outsource software development jobs to India, Taiwan, China and other countries where the labor costs were lower than they are here in the United States. Obviously, the concern then was that the development jobs would move to those other people and the developers here in our country would no longer find themselves employed. 

In fact, at that time, I began to travel internationally far more frequently than I had in the past because those developers required training as well. 

What I noticed was that the number of developers I was being asked to train within the boundaries of the United States was not decreasing during this period, I just got a lot busier with all the travel. Gradually, over time, I begin to realize why this was.

When I was a young developer, most business processes were not conducted on computers. I was working for the CBS television and radio networks at the time, and I can tell you that much of what took place during, say, a news broadcast involved physical systems and manual processes. 

Commercials, for example, which constitute the primary source of revenue for that business, were played back from individual 2-inch cassette tapes which had to be transported by courier from ad agencies to stations, stations to stations, and so forth. These were loaded into a large rotating carousel that would be triggered by an operator when it was time for the ad to air. I was actually one of those couriers when I was in college. 

Similarly, the teleprompter that is used to allow the newscaster to read the news directly from a mirror in front of the camera lens was a physical system involving a conveyor belt and printed news copy on physical pieces of paper.

Because of things like this, when my software did not operate properly, or when it took a long time for me to be able to develop a system, the business went on as usual without much impact due to my work.

Today, none of that is true. Everything is run by computers and therefore run by software.  This took place gradually over time, but the pace of that change was always increasing, and it still is today. In other words, the need for quality software is increasing exponentially year by year, and the real question is are we going to be able to keep up with that need in order to keep our economy, our culture, and our lives in a healthy state?

What I told developers at the time is that you should see those outsource developers not as competition, but rather as collaborators who are helping you to bail out a boat which is taking on water at an increasing rate over time. 

I think that may be largely true about AI as well. My instincts are that the developers who come to me with these concerns will not be replaced in years to come but rather will be able to produce much more software at a faster rate without facing excessive work and potential burnout. I tell them to see AI as a team member, perhaps a junior developer that they are bringing along in the process. As AI improves, which I'm sure it will, then this will make it simply a better collaborator when trying to keep up with the demands of the world, which I suspect we would not be able to otherwise.

Whether I am right about that remains to be seen, of course, but I think that's likely true. Next week I will address the concerns that businesses have brought to me about the prospect of AI developing their systems. What they have said to me may surprise you.

Stay tuned for that!