Generative AI is definitely a much more useful technology than block chain, but it seems to feature a very similar number of grifters. The notion that gen-AI can effectively replace a software developer is pushed by people with an incredibly reductive view of what developers do and views them as little more than glorified (and very expensive) typists. As any experienced dev will tell you the bit where they actually sit down and type out the code is the easy bit that comes once you’ve figured out all the hard problems.
It’s a great technology for demos, there are certain situations where it can just feel like magic, but when you really start working with one on any sort of challenging real-world problem the whole thing falls apart very quickly. It’s useful as a sort of glorified search engine and code generator, it’s replaced Google for a lot of day to day programming tasks for me, but overall it’s resulted in probably a 10-15% boost in productivity.
Given how expensive they are to run and to train I don’t think it’s going to be too long before a lot of companies realise that the cost just isn’t worth the benefit. My own employer, one of the world’s most profitable banks, is already getting angsty about the costs and we basically just have basic Copilot licenses. These gen-AI models will sap up 100s of billions over the next decade but there’s no big 100 billion dollar problem that’s waiting for them to solve.
Anyway, rant over. 🙂
