The sudden buzz in the AI field and the predictions of what it can do has been a storm in the recent days. The news which carried most of the weightage was about replacing jobs currently held by humans by AI. This is a general trend in the capitalist societies, because the ones who could try on new tech is the one with the access and control to capital, who can hire either tech or labour.

So the conversations are about how to create a cheaper present and save capital instead of dreaming up newer future with the advancements. What job does a new technology disrupt? Different technologies disrupted different jobs over time, generally the one that is disrupted has been a hard to learn skill. Before the emails, and messaging became ubiquitous; a career as a typist made a lot of sense. That job quickly became redundant with word processors giving formatting & correcting abilities which encouraged a lot of DIY.

I have a personal example when I was a billboard maker during my college days. We were reliant on artists for painting billboards and getting their time and negotiating the rates were quite difficult. Within a span of a year or two I witnessed computers becoming very cheap and desktop publishing becoming more common. All of a sudden we were able to DIY entire design in a PC, get feedback from customer and quickly iterate, deliver it in a record amount of time compared to hand painted billboards.

The crux of disruptions have always been DIY or cheap automation. If we see from that point of view, what executives are dreaming of a cheaper present in the software industry by replacing programmers with AI is not feasible, instead it is the other way around. Programmers are mere translators of business solution into what a computer can understand. Even with AI, executives won’t be having the patience or the skill to get the AI to understand and solve their business problems through technical solutions. Using AI will either become a higher order programming or augmentation to programming in the near term.

On the other hand AI will provide abilities of a CFO, CEO, COO and other executives in a cost effective, time efficient way to a board or a young inexperienced executive, who can compete so easily with veteran executives by teaming up with AI. It is this position that is under risk due to AI than the run of the mill programming jobs who just needs to skill up on how to team up with AI or equip AI. That is the new future we are heading towards.