With seriously massive progress being made in the generative AI realm of machine learning, I think it is really important that as engineers, builders, and entrepreneurs, we really evaluate what this means for the work that we pride ourselves in doing. Is AI going to compete us out of jobs? Will we be left with less opportunities to start companies? Pretty much, yes, but that’s a good thing.
First off, let’s start with where I think this entire space is headed. GPT-4 just came out last week and has already shown amazing progress in helping people make money with it’s “HustleGPT” persona, code entire websites from hand-drawn mockups, and even hire humans to handle tasks it’s unable to do right now, like solve captchas, on Task Rabbit. This is on top of it’s already amazing abilities writing marketing copy, explaining complicated technical papers as a caveman, coding entire Node.JS backends, etc. It’s really impressive stuff, and seeing how quickly this is all being developed it makes sense that engineers are getting concerned with the security of their jobs. Anybody can ask ChatGPT to code up their entire site, piece by piece, regardless of their skill level. On the other hand, it is for this reason exactly that builders and entrepreneurs are over the moon with the efficiencies generative AI brings to their workflow; some are launching entire online businesses in less than 48 hours. It’s great, for now, but should they be as scared as the engineers? Absolutely.
As I see it, generative AI in it’s current form is a warning shot for what is to come; quick, easy, and cheap software engineering work that can be done by anyone on a device as low power as a phone. Entire engineering departments are going to be reorganized once this becomes even more accurate, quicker, and cheaper. We are basically about to witness a race-to-the-bottom type event in engineering, with only the very best high level engineers sticking around. These will start with the engineers that can push prompts to ChatGPT to do the work needed to integrate into complex business logic, but eventually will only be the high level architects and system designers.
Entire service-based businesses are going to feel the sudden and immediate jolt generative AI is going to send through the industry. Now instead of having to pay TypeForm to make an online survey for you, you can ask ChatGPT (or it’s equivalent) to code it up for you and have it ready to use in minutes. It will cost you fractions of a penny, walk you through exactly how to host it on your platform of choosing, and will even act as 24/7 support for the code it wrote; all it will take is one person capable of pushing a prompt. This is a really big deal for service-based companies, and is an extinction-level event in my mind. An extinction that might just need to happen.
I believe such a shift is going to happen in about 3-5 years from today, which means these service-based businesses are going to have one of two options: sink or swim. Sinking is obvious and will come as the default result of inaction, but how do you swim in such an economy?
The future of tech will be either platform-based businesses, or tech mixed with physical engineering. You either need to be developing the next PayPal, eBay, YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc, which leverages the users of it’s platform as it’s value-add, or you need to begin integrating tech into other aspects life. Technology and rockets, technology and cars, technology and logistics, etc. With the exception of very niche products (like natural language processor command prompts for 3D modellers using Blender, as an example), the tech industry will only have those options. Pretty much everything else will be wiped out if they don’t make the shift as soon as humanly possible.
Is this a bad thing? Not in my eyes. In actuality, this is how it should’ve been, and it’s how the tech industry used to be. These small service-based businesses are a symptom of a massively over-funded industry fuelled by low interest rates and easy loans. Think about it, when was the last time there was any actual meaningful innovation in technology? The only one that immediately comes to my mind in the last 5-10 years is “AI”, and even that is right on the cusp of the 10 year mark. Most of the fundamental work was done along time ago, and we’re just reaping the rewards of the effort from decades previous, as well as some new GPU tech. The reality is that we’ve had a very easy time building businesses and selling reskinned versions of the same products for years, running essentially completely unchecked (that is, until the consequences of inflation rear their ugly head). Companies that should’ve been simple bootstrapped businesses became unicorns without a product and nothing but debt to their name. These are phenomenons that shouldn’t have existed, but did, for much of the 2010s.
This is the exciting part now: we get to see who was swimming naked, so to speak. Now is the time to really prove yourself as a great engineer, builder, or entrepreneur. Once the tedious and easy work gets abstracted away and totally commoditized by generative AI, the only thing left standing between you and honest-to-goodness riches is serious innovation. Needle pushing work that not only nudges humanity forward, but yanks us by the collar and tosses us way further ahead than we could’ve ever guessed.
You are either going to push the needle, or you’re going to push the prompt. Push the needle.