[Nikhil Suresh at Ludicity]

"This entire class of person is, to put it simply, abhorrent to right-thinking people. They're an embarrassment to people that are actually making advances in the field, a disgrace to people that know how to sensibly use technology to improve the world, and are also a bunch of tedious know-nothing bastards that should be thrown into Thought Leader Jail until they've learned their lesson, a prison I'm fundraising for."

I enjoyed this very much.

Here's the thing, though: I don't think what Nikhil wants will happen.

I mean, don't get me wrong: it probably should. The author is a leader in his field, and his exasperation at the hype train is well-earned.

But it's not people like Nikhil who actually make the decisions, or invest in the companies, or make the whole industry (or industries) tick over. Again: it should be.

What happens again and again is that people who see that they can make money out of a particularly hyped technology leap onto the bandwagon, and then market the bandwagon within an inch of everybody's lives. Stuff that shouldn't be widespread becomes widespread.

And here we are again with AI.

This is exactly right:

"Unless you are one of a tiny handful of businesses who know exactly what they're going to use AI for, you do not need AI for anything - or rather, you do not need to do anything to reap the benefits. Artificial intelligence, as it exists and is useful now, is probably already baked into your businesses software supply chain."

And this:

"It did not end up being the crazy productivity booster that I thought it would be, because programming is designing and these tools aren't good enough (yet) to assist me with this seriously."

There is work that will be improved with AI, but it's not something that most industries will have to stop everything and leap on top of. The human use cases must come first with any technology: if you have a problem that AI can solve, by all means, use AI. But if you don't, hopping on the hype train is just going to burn you a lot of money and slow your actual core business down.

#AI

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