Navigating AI
Different people have different attitude to AI. Some are excited, some are worried, some think this is the beginning of an end for our species, most people are still sleeping or don't realize the full scale of upcoming transformation. The variance/amplitude between the floor and ceiling of expectations is huge right now.
I consider myself closer to the ceiling in terms of expected scale of impact. It is pretty hard to confidently/accurately predict how the future will look like, personally I don't belong to any particular group that is certain about the end game, but I'm pretty certain that the future will be very different from the present, i.e. I am certain only in the magnitude of changes (but also I don't really have enough time to think about this stuff because there is just so much work, and I feel like in a hamster wheel).
I honestly have no idea whether AI will be good or bad for you 🫵🏼, the reader. It might go either way, very good or really bad. I fully expect that some people will have pretty negative attitude to me/my work at some point in the future, especially those who didn't read this, but oh well, this is just something I came to terms with.
A question interesting to me is what are the key factors that will determine whether AI impact will be positive/negative to an individual. At the conference I was asked a question that had a premise that things will get worse before they get better. This is true on average, but not necessarily true for an individual, and I think it is important assumption to expose. I fully expect that there will be people that mostly win, so the question is what can you do to be one of them.
TBH I'm still grappling with this question myself and don't have clear answers. I expect my understanding to evolve and hopefully I'll post something, but here is my line of reasoning for now.
AI is a foundational technology, like electricity and internet, that will most likely impact all areas of life. Therefore the scale of changes will be vast. It is also a fast-evolving technology, so the changes will continue to happen for some time. Many assumptions which are true today will become false, and methods that work today will stop working.
I think a useful trait in this regime is adaptability. The world will be continuously changing for the next 10y, and so many skills relevant today will become irrelevant. I expect that it will be critical to be open minded and be ready to change.
I am actually somewhat bad at this: I don't really like changes/transitions. This is also gets worse with age: we get more conservative, start appreciating traditions, routine, stability. We have experience that will become irrelevant over time and many of us will have to fight the inertia to keep doing what worked before, and it will be physiologically hard to admit that we need to change. I expect the closed minded people in denial to be impacted the worst.
From this perspective young people are in a better position. Younger people have fewer habits/assumptions to unlearn. Students' brains are still in the learning mode. You don't really have much of a choice but to embrace the future.
Anyway, these are some unfinished thoughts. I need to get off the plane now and I'd rather post it now in this crude form, than delay.
