Last week, GPT-4 was announced. Then, we had the Microsoft Copilot, GitHub Copilot X and even more AI powered tools. Funny that I was discussing whether my past ten years of programming was meaningful. It is fast how things change. Last time, I went to UNSW for the 30th anniversary of CSE. The speaker said something like this, AI is overhyped now but will be underhyped in the future. That future… is now.
Time flies.
Yesterday, I just left motherland to study in Singapore. When I open my eyes again, I am here in Australia. The past ten years has gone before I realise. Ever since my friend left Singapore, I have been focusing heavily on programming. Sometimes, I wake up, program, have my meals, keep programming, sleep, and repeat. 10,000 programming hours is very conservative. Programming was my entire life, but things are different now.
I used to wonder why I am getting worse than before. This answer is clear now. I am having a better life, so I don’t need to use programming to forget about everything. I can never be as good as before when programming was my only thing.
AI changes everything.
It is definitely a good thing, but I am worried about the future. Sometimes, I feel like our productivity increases so rapidly that we aren’t ready for it. When you get every answer from AI, you lose the joy of finding it yourself. What’s fun with programming is that you spend hours looking for the answer and find it eventually. That joy is gone when AI can just give it to you instantly. It is indeed a significant productivity gain, but do we need to lose even more things?
Ever since we got social media, I always wonder if that makes us close or further away. Do we still treasure precious memory with our friends when we can have so many friends? It is nice that we can connect every day and see each other online. However, I feel like we are losing something.
The future is undecided.
Tomorrow, we may have something crazier than GPT-4. How long can we still keep our jobs before AI replaces some? I cannot just assume that it will take years now. Microsoft Copilot can do all your emails, words, excels, powerpoints and more. It is like your personalised assistant but better. Adobe Firefly boosts the productivity of creative professionals. Stable Diffusion draws images in seconds whereas it takes hours or days for artists. Large Language Models can be finetuned to specialise in any domain. It will happen sooner than we think.
AI is great, but are we ready for it?