General Discussion

I work for one of the largest tech companies leading the AI revolution. I am a software architect in the Advanced Technology part of our business. For various reasons I cannot tell you which company or express an opinion online about the future of AI.

So far, generative AI is simply a predictive algorithm. It uses your prompt to create a neural net of relationships based on ML data harvested ( sometimes illegally ) from the vast amounts of data created in the past by humans ( and now derivative data from other AIs ). This data can lead the neural net to create obvious mistakes in the answer to the prompt you give it. The age old problem known as GIGO ( Garbage In Garbage Out ) is still with us.

However, there are new advances every day... advances in compute power to form the relationships, Agentic AI that attempts to evaluate multiple answers to a single prompt and produce a consensus view of the "correct" answer. And in the field of genetic algorithms ( this is where the AI runs the neural net multiple times with slightly different evaluators and modifications to the inference tokens coming from multiple AIs ).

None of this is real intelligence. None of this is "outside the box" thinking or innovation. That said, by looking at the vast amount of data available... AI can ( and has ) applied many "facts" to the prompt or question posed... allowing it to come up with "new" ways to think about the issue in the prompt.

As for taking away jobs... that is happening, and has been happening long before AI. Robotics are replacing people in factories at a far faster rate than we are prepared to address. When Trump applies tariffs to "force the return of manufacturing to the USA", he might succeed... but there won't be many jobs coming with that.

I already use AI everyday to write software to manage the process of creating new AI. I don't know how many programming jobs will be available in 20 years time ( possibly 10 years ).

AI is not over hyped... and is not under hyped. It will transform industry... The smart money is investing billions to make it so, just like the internet build out in the 1990s and 2000s before it.

I am reaching the end of my career in Computer Science... and of course I am a bit worried about what will come. Some might say "how can you contribute to this"... and I do wrestle with my decision. On the other hand, you cannot hold back the ocean with a pitchfork. And the good may outweigh the bad. AI, like the Web, the Internet, and computers in general, are just tools. Powerful tools, but just tools. I do not worry that someday my computer will "wake up" and want me to explain funny once or funny always jokes to it ( with a tip of my hat to Robert Heinlein and The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress ). at least I currently see no evidence of that.