Meir's Monthly Learning Article

This month I want to highlight a blog post, Finding the sweet spot for using AI as a developer, by Ole Herland. This article recounts a developer’s journey from AI skeptic to AI proponent. All it took was a gentle nudge from a friend, and an open mind.

As someone who traveled a similar path around AI, I found this blog a good reminder that the road from skeptic to proponent can come by focusing on practical application instead of theory. The article doesn’t contain a ground breaking insight, however it does a nice job of simply describing the author’s journey, and that journey may be helpful for others who aren’t yet there.

Sharing my experience as both an AI skeptic and proponent, I believe AI has the following properties:

1. [THE GOOD] – AI is a massive productivity booster for productive people. As the article author discovered, using AI to boost your own productivity works really well when you can efficiently guide the AI and quickly debug its outputs. Seniors are finding AI to be a terrific way to simplify their work.
2. [THE BAD] – AI productivity is not guaranteed. AI-driven productivity boosts are a function of your existing knowledge. The more you know, the better AI serves you; conversely, the less you know, the less impact. And there is no bottom – you can achieve negative impact (productivity) when using AI.
3. [THE UGLY] – Society is not effectively supporting AI’s rate of change. At the risk of sounding alarmist, it seems clear that society’s structures are not easily adapting as AI changes the world. This is evidenced through actual outcomes – like the shifting tech job market – and also through the narrative around likely changes, such as full job replacements and AGI. Because AI is changing the world so quickly, it is difficult to predict the precise improvements that will occur, however it is clear that society will continue to adapt slowly, which will cause harm during periods of change.

https://herland.me/blog/finding-the-sweet-spot-for-using-ai-as-a-developer/

“When I was enjoying bucket 1 for about a month, I was on cloud9 using AI. It was almost like my fingers could type at 1 000 wpm...Then, when I was doing work that fits in bucket 2 I quickly felt the complete opposite. It was slower, no joy, slow progress and I felt like shit.”