From novice to pro
When ChatGPT first started becoming mainstream in early 2023 I began playing with it as a coding tool. My coding experience centered around building websites and digital magazines at school, you can tell I was cool, all self-taught and very limited.
After just a few months, I was building applications and automations for a bunch of different tasks. I was automating things that would once have taken hours of manual work, done in minutes or even seconds. I had found my work happy place. I was making inefficient things efficient, and removing tedious work from the agenda.
When I started using these AI models, building an application took a few months with my limited coding experience. Last year, with the latest models available to us at work and a few years of prompting and bug-fixing under my belt, I updated one of the applications I had built in less than a month of part-time work. This month, I’ve completed another major upgrade using the latest AI tools in less than a day. A week of robust testing and iterative updates all guided by my AI professor followed.
The future is here and it’s only going to get better. We now live in a time where if you have an idea to build something you can do it. It may require some patience and problem-solving, but if you have the vision for what you need these tools are powerful.
In that vein I’ve started doing something I’ve always dreamt of doing. Building my own iPhone App. For my first App, I’m trying to solve a basic problem for myself that may help a few others too. It’s a practice run to see what’s possible with just an idea and an AI tool. I’ll share more about what the App is for in the future but today I want to focus on what my experience with the latest tools means for our future.
Now anything is possible
Being able to explain an idea you have, how you want it to work, look and feel in your native language and then have AI bring that idea to life in just a few minutes is mind-blowing. It takes years of technical learning out of the way and allows you to identify a problem, carefully plan a solution and execute it, with an expert at your beck and call. The hype is not just real. It’s understated. It’s cinema, as the kids say.
It doesn’t have to just be an automation or an App, it can be something in the real world too. I’ve followed instructions on how to grout a shower for example. Taken pictures of broken things and gotten instructions on how to fix them. In our family we use it for cooking instructions, taking pictures of ingredients and asking for custom recipes. We are constantly asking for advice on things to feed our daughter that are both good for her and won’t end up on the floor. The floor is still covered in food, but she’s healthy and eating well.
Need a comprehensive and complicated concept explained to you like a child? Done.
Have an idea that you want to mock up before building it? Done.
Ready to build it? Let’s go!
Need someone to tell you not to buy that outfit? Sorry, only someone who truly loves you will do that.
I literally have an AI agent working through my latest App spec in the background while I type this, I’ve told it some ideas I have for how my new App should work and it’s running off and making them happen. I describe what I want, it builds it. I iterate based on what I see and it builds that.
This is a great equalizer. Most of these AI applications currently have decent free versions available for you to use right now from your phone. If you are not playing with these tools, you are missing the boarding call.
But what about the downsides of these powerful tools?
The problems with AI
A lot of people today are focusing on where these tools fall short. The mistakes they make, the abuses people are already using them for —Grok, ahem— the fabricated facts they share. But take a step back. If you told most people ten years ago that tools like this would even exist they would think you were living in a fantasy world with light sabers and slug kings.
I’ve mentioned before that my P(doom)1 is on the higher end of the scale. Humanity has proven that we will choose greed, repeat wars, ignore warnings, and hurt each other in the name of progress. So these tools could very well mean the end of us. These fears are not unfounded, most AI leaders are petrified of what could go wrong even if they’re barreling ahead anyway.
For now, I’m choosing to focus on what I can achieve with these tools while keeping my ear to the ground on where it could all go wrong. We tend to lean towards a negative outlook as people, it’s one of the things that has kept us alive for this long despite animals being superior to us in many ways. But humanity has also come an incredibly long way from playing with sticks in the mud.
We’ve cured diseases, built giant things and microscopic things. We’ve improved quality of life and life expectancy across the board, even managing to slow a global pandemic to the point of ignoring it. Nothing like being back in an airport with everyone coughing and sneezing while standing right on top of you. Almost everybody in the world has incredible access to information never dreamt of in the palm of their hands. Humanity is making progress despite the horrors we see in the news.
Focus on what you control
We can live in a world of fear and worry. Will these incredible tools take my job, will it lead to a recession, wars, the end of humanity?
You can also live in a world of utopia. Will technology solve poverty, sickness and climate change?
While it may be interesting to ponder these big questions, the reality is most of it is out of our control. The billionaires are going to do as they wish, and build what they will and we’re going to be left with the consequences. But we’re a hardy bunch. We’ll do what humans always do. Adapt, recalibrate to a new normal, and bound forward to achieve incredible things. Now if only AI could teach our daughter not to throw her food on the floor for the dog.
As defined on Wikipedia: In AI safety, P(doom) is the probability of existentially catastrophic outcomes (so-called "doomsday scenarios") as a result of artificial intelligence.