| AI tip of the week: We attend a LOT of conferences and meetings. We often have to grab screenshots and pics of lot of slides to share or save for later. Pro tip: Use an AI tool like ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot. Upload a photo. Prompt “Extract text from image” Tada! a plain text version of the info from the pic – much more useful! “Chat GBT is stupid” – Dona’s sister Bonnie. “I need AI like I need an app to order fresh fruit” – Jeremiah’s father. When our friends and family say things like this to us, we launch into tale. It’s in fact Chat GPT, as in generative pre-trained transformer, etc. AI is a a different – and much more useful type of tech – than yet another app for fresh fruit delivery. The retort from our loved ones always seems to be: “No one cares about your boring thing.” Our boring thing, indeed. Sigh. How many of you ALSO have people in your life who are not impressed by AI? ::everyone raises hands:: First of all, let’s have a moment of silence for a time when we ALL had regular jobs and we did not need to hear the words “AI” every 2 minutes. The day was November 30, 2022, when ChatGPT burst onto the scene and chaos spread throughout the land. The reason many people (probably even you) roll your eyes when people talk about how “life-changing” AI is – is because the hype has been so hard about this. Second of all, let’s talk about why about 50% of people you know think AI is stupid. The short answer is because of hype and overhype. We are kind of tired of hearing about the “magic” of AI without seeing a lot of real examples. Cue the Gartner Hype Cycle. AI has followed this pattern almost exactly: 1. Technological Trigger – ChatGPT erupts onto the scene with a big splashy launch 2. Peak of Inflated Expectations – Apparently AI is destroying all the industries and taking all of our jobs (Remember when AI is apparently killing off the need for farmers and fashion designers? Also AI has killed off data science. How are we doing AI without data again?) 3. Trough of Disillusionment – Once AI didn’t actually transform and/or destroy everything overnight, everyone started to get negative. AI is now good for nothing, full of hallucinations and completely useless. 4. Slope of Enlightenment – We are FINALLY reaching a point where practical people like yourself are able to say, AI is good for SOME things, not all things. Let’s identify what the good scenarios are. 5. Plateau of Productivity – In SOME cases, people are seeing real benefits to using AI. Hype aside, there are some real measurable benefits to AI from a variety of industries: • Amazon: CEO Andy Jassy said that the company’s AI Assistant Q saved $260M and 4,500 dev years by cutting down the time to upgrade an app. Now upgrading an app to Java 17 now only takes a few hours instead of 50 dev days. • Walmart: Used AI Models to improve their product catalog with images and copy. Without AI, this would have taken nearly 100X the current workforce. • Medical experts: An interesting scenario is experts using AI as a thought partner such as a cancer immunologist named Derya Unutmaz who recently tweeted that he is about to test a cancer immunotherapy idea that OpenAI’s o1 model gave him. He’s a huge fan of AI in the medical field to supplement, not replace doctors and recently praised Harvard Medical School for adding AI into their curriculum to train their next generation of doctors. • Beginners: And Dona’s own personal story. When she first learned the C++ programming language in 1998, it took her about 3 years to become truly proficient. When she learned JavaScript in 2012, it took her a full year to become truly proficient. Now, she is learning Python using an AI Assistant (GitHub Copilot!), and she has been able to become proficient in just a month. Something interesting we recently read was Boston Consulting Group’s study on AI. They did a study for a series of months and found that those using AI outperformed those who did not with 40% higher quality and 20% faster work. You can see how a company only giving access to AI tools for ONE part of its workforce is definitely going to lead to a digital inequity problem. A bit USA centric, but something we thought was interesting was that the USA Office of Management and Budget issued a requirement that government agencies MUST hire Chief AI Officers who will then coordinate the agency’s use of AI, promote AI innovation and also mange risks of using AI. And as of October 24, 2024, the US White House issued a National Security Memorandum declaring that ‘AI is likely to affect almost all domains with national security significance.’ Attracting technical talent and building computational power are now official national security priorities. And let’s not forget the European AI Act that’s set to hit in 2025 and cause massive chaos to companies all over the world! Given all these scenarios, we can predict that AI-knowledge will become vital for our careers going forward, no matter what field we might happen to be in. Again, we don’t yet fully know what kinds of new jobs will show up in the next few years, but if you look at the past, social media influencers showed up because of Instagram. DevOps became a job once cloud dev became a thing. These are all lucrative jobs that were created as a result of a tech trigger. In the AI-verse, the AI Power User is one job that we are seeing in many companies and organizations. This is someone who is actively using AI in parts of their job to figure out if these are good scenarios or not good scenarios. They are documenting their journeys, their favorite scenarios and prompts and acting as mentors toward others in their field. Becoming an AI Power User is a fantastic way to future-prep yourself for any career you want in the future. Okay so you’re sold on being an AI power user, right? RIGHT?! There’s a bit of work to do to become an AI Power User…starting with language. What are these words that AI people love to throw around like Machine Learning, AI, Generative AI, Agentic AI anyway? Stay tuned! ✨Dona & Jeremiah ✨ |