At SQL Bits, I was chatting with Brent about a few things, including AI, which we think is changing the world. I’ve got my set of AI experiments going, and I do believe we will fundamentally alter work and how we use computers in the future.
Not sure if it’s for the better or worse, but things are changing and will change more.
Brent mentioned he was thinking about how a few years ago the “next great thing” was blockchain, which was going to change databases and storage, but never really caught on. I never thought it would as it seemed too niche-y for me.
What other great waves of tech have you seen over the years? I saw a prediction that data engineering will be dead in 5 years. I’ll take that bet. I’ve been hearing the DBA (or other data related positions) will be gone soon for over 25 years. I remember friends asking me if I was worried about my position after SQL Server v7 was released in 1998. I wasn’t then, and I’m not now. It seems there is more work than ever, though certainly the bar is higher for people doing the work.
You need to learn to be better at your job if you want some job security. That’s one reason I constantly push people to learn, improve, and show off ( consider #SQLNewBlogger posts) their skills. Employers want to know you’re providing value if they’re paying you $$ (or € or £ or ¥ or whatever).
There have been plenty of tech flops. Virtual/Extended/Augmented reality and various headsets haven’t quite taken off, though there is no shortage of new “AI powered” eyeglass products. Quantum computing still seems to be only slightly less fantastic than fusion energy. Voice control or gestures were supposed to make keyboards obsolete, but we still type a lot.
There are also some amazing things. Touch computing, especially on mobile, dominates. More and more digital payments are changing our commerce functions. Smartphones are essential devices for most people with apps available for anything and everything.
I do think GenAI will continue to change the world and how many of us work. This was an interesting talk on how AI changes work, not from a technologist per se, but from a writer. The GenAI models continue to improve, and I find them most useful in saving me minutes, not doing all my work. They are becoming more helpful, though slightly untrustworthy assistants. They are eager teenagers that can help, but need supervision and guidance.
And sometimes need to be abandoned for the current task and you need to do the rest of (or all of) the work.
What memories do you have of past “next great things? or maybe of what you see for the future?
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When has any tech prediction played out as predicted? I remember how .Net was going to eliminate everything else. How the IOT would have everything talking to everything else. How the Cloud was going to eliminate workstations so that all we have are dummy terminals. All tech changes that were going to reinvent humanity and while they’ve definitely had an impact both positive and negative, the story is always the same; hype exceeds reality. At first these General Large Language Learning Models we call AI but which are not really AI were marketed as being the AI that would take over doing everything. Now that the hype is played out and reality is setting in along with time which reveals all, we’re finding out that these aren’t really AI’s but next level query engines and like Google their only as reliable as that which they source. They are just as susceptible to false information as any human googling for something. Where they excel at is with making it easier for the user to get what they are looking for. One of the hardest hurdles with using the nets various query engines is knowing how to ask the right question. When you don’t know what you don’t know it can be trickly to know what to ask. These bots need less specificity and proper spelling/grammar to determine what it is the user wants. I just hope that our leaders don’t have to make some truly bad decision to realize how it’s a mistake to embrace these things as replacing humans in masse. They are tools; nothing more. A tool doesn’t replace a human but enables a human to do more, better and ideally in less time. I fear that like with offshoring, those in charge who can only see $$ will do something stupid like mass layoffs across the board replacing people with AI Bots. Just as with offshoring, that works as a cost cutting measure only so long as the few do it. Once enough jump on board any benefits are negated with 1 exception; you’ve wasted a lot of resources, times and valuable talent replacing talented employees with cheaper less reliable alternatives. Now you’re service sucks and the only way to do better is to effectively undo all you just did with offshoring. There is also the question of if all or just a majority of humans have been replaced with AI bots then who exactly is going to be your customer base now that most humans are unemployed? With past advances in tech one could argue that the human response is to up your game and move on to learning a more complex skill so when computing took off the response was learn to code. What exactly is it are humans supposed to advance to that these AI Bots can’t also advance to? Unless reverting a more physical job like with the trades, there’s no “learn to code” equivalent. Because of financial short sightedness of executives who’s lives revolve around that bonus pay instead of overall long term company performance and health, they will do something like mass layoffs replacing large portions of humans with these bots and by the time this blows back on them it may be too late to fix.The smart entities will find a way to pair these AI Bots with human employees to do more/better.
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Nothing is ever as great as it’s hyped, certainly not in the short term. However, some things prove to be more valuable than we expect in the long term.
I think AI is there. It’s going to fundamentally change a lot of things, since it can simulate and act like a human much better than many things in the past. Those who take advantage of it will do great. They’ll be able to amplify what AI bots can do, direct the, use them as a set of assistants to get things done. They’ll learn how to train or connect them. There’s also opportunity for people to learn how to communicate with AI. Most people have poor communication skills, so there still will be a need for people to translate what someone wants into something an AI can produce.
Offshoring worked well for a few places. Most people (including execs) just want a quick, easy solution, that that’s not how most things work. It takes effort get make anything successful.
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“Most people have poor communication skills, so there still will be a need for people to translate what someone wants into something an AI can produce.”That may be an understatement and strangely enough one I’m not so sure AI will help with b/c if AI is good at anything (IMHO) it’s better guessing at what it is some one is trying to ask for. Just the ability alone to reference previous queries is huge advancement so one need not re-type in every subsequent query, everything asked from the prior one. It can also be humorous at least with Grok it is b/c Grok will reference back to something you asked hours or days ago that has absolutely NOTHING to do with your current query and Grok will try and make a connection between the 2 anyway. I actually got a great idea for a take on Ayan Rands ATLASS SHRUGGED b/c of Grok trying connect it with something else unrelated. Grok even came up with a name for the book; ATLASS WHIMPERED. In Atlas Shrugged Rand perfectly explores the idea of government excess/over reach. In ALASS WHIMPERED we (Grok and I) were toying around with the reverse where you have zero government regulation/intervention, a truly open market with absolutely no governing over business at all and while it sounds great at first it can turn out just as bad ion the end once enough people with zero ethics seek to exploit everyone else. Its about exploring balance between the 2 and Grok pout me on the path to pondering that by accident; by connecting 2 unrelated queries. For example you don’t want some amateur hack building homes that the untrained eye doesn’t recognize are dangerous b/c they weren’t built properly but on the flip side you don’t want berecrautic red tape so abusive that you can’t replace your garage roof without thousands in fee’s, licensing , years of back and forth with government agencies and maybe even a few legal threats b/c of how slow the government moves. I can also see AI making everyone into a faux genius b/c they have the knowledge of the world at the fingertips and with AI they have something that can help them make some sense of it even if they don’t truly comprehend some of it. What i don’t want to se is for AI to make us mentally what the robots in the Pixar movie WAL-E did to human bodies making them fat and lazy b/c they no longer had to exercise their muscles. Last thing we need is less exercising of the human mind.
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You’re not really communicating a specific request to do something; you’re brainstorming and getting suggestions, which is something AIs are good at. I can see there won’t be reasons to memorize facts as the GenAI can find them. You can have a conversation with it, which is true. I do think this is useful, and can make people think about things they might not have at the front of their minds.
However, think about coding, asking the GenAI to build something. Or maybe change the roof on your garage. It might give you good steps, but it also might not do what you want unless you specify things well. I do think GenAI might get better at asking questions back, but I also think humans will need to learn to be more specific. The GenAI is somewhat like a genie. It might do exactly what you ask, which might not be what you want.
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