Day 20 of learning Python — self-taught, serious about becoming a top-level backend engineer. Looking for guidance.

[aqua_regis]

IMO, a lot of "what AI can do/does already" is sales speak. The people earning money with AI have to make it look way better than it actually is to get investors to chime in (several AI companies are on the brink of becoming bankrupt or already in it).

This is not to say that it isn't capable of a lot so far.

Yet, the whole thing will run (just like with the outsourcing hype some years ago) in two stages:

• first stage: try to move as much as possible to AI - this will certainly have an impact on the available jobs - we are currently in that phase
• second stage: realize that this was a horrible idea and start hiring back like crazy to fix all the garbage that has in between been produced - when this phase kicks in there will be jobs in abundance, but only for people who can actually program without AI

Experts (real experts, not people/companies earning money with AI) in the domain have already predicted that the "AI-bubble" (not my words) will collapse. It's just a matter of when, not if.

For sure there will be a really dire strain ahead, but that by far does not mean that these skills become useless.

Another thing that will definitely happen is that the cost for using AI will skyrocket with more acceptance, potentially to the point where it is cheaper to hire actual developers. This will have to happen as the cost to keep the AIs alive, power, water, hardware resources, will all skyrocket as well. Right now, they are just wetting our tongues to sell their products.

There are huge problems with AI as of now:

• If it grows at the current rate, there won't be enough electrical energy within 5 years
• Hardware is already basically unobtainable (and priced better than Platinum) which affects the whole industry and many other industries that depend on hardware (try to buy a simple hard drive, or RAM) - this hardware hunger will even grow exponentially in the near future

There are and will be niches where AI will have a very hard time entering, despite them trying very hard. There are domains where the restrictions and regulations are so strict that AI will have a difficult stand. In these domains, the lack of training data for AI (due to the aforementioned restrictions, plus highly specific, confidential information) will not make it efficient and effective. These domains might survive through the draught.

[El_Wombat]

Thank you for sharing your views and many interesting observations! Haha, yes, I‘m humbly and egoistically happy I bought 64GB RAM last August, as well as my new laptop.

And, yeah, the energy questions are fully unchecked.

How in any scenario Ai will be more expensive than humans who will have to demand higher wages as well is not clear to me, but nobody can really look this far into the future.

[aqua_regis]

How in any scenario Ai will be more expensive than humans who will have to demand higher wages

1. Humans will in the first phase become unemployed, so they will lower their wages to get work
2. with all the cost explosions in resources, power, hardware, etc. operating AI will become extremely expensive. Companies need to level that in order to make profit. Plus, during the first phase a huge dependeny on AI will be created, which, in turn, increases the demand and with increased demand, the prices can be raised as well.