Not too long ago, while playing a game of chess, I found myself mesmerized by the thought process behind the computer opponent. It’s astounding how well it calculates our moves and pins us down. Back then, I used to think that all these moves were just a set of if-else conditions or maybe switch-case statements. As a developer, I always neglected to dig deeper into how they actually work, believing it was simply a matter of creating a circuitry of conditional statements that could process any scenario and arrive at a result.
But here’s the reveal (drum roll)... It’s all some kind of an AI, which, back then, we didn’t even know existed. These systems make decisions or calculated choices based on numerous inputs they gather. You might wonder why I’m saying all these. Well, there’s a good reason...
THINGS HAVE CHANGED A LOT THESE DAYS!
AI development has progressed so rapidly that we're still struggling to keep up with it. Do you know what my biggest fear as a developer is? No, it’s not being unable to complete a given task. It’s “Not finding the solution to my problem on Stack Overflow.” That’s right. We developers have always had a great community, whether it’s on Stack Overflow, GitHub, or other social forums, where numerous threads provide solutions through back-and-forth replies. This is what makes us developers, building knowledge collectively and proudly sharing our solutions over the internet.
But, sadly, I feel this global community is slowly deteriorating. We now have AI tools that can scrape the internet or even generate entirely new solutions to our problems before we’ve even provided complete information to it. It’s an impressive feat, no doubt. But is it really necessary though?
When I started my career, I used to spend hours just centering a div or making a transition to match my expectations. It was like exploring a city to find a route to a new place. It wasn’t about the time spent but the memories and connections we made with that city. Now, with new AI tech, it’s like riding on a highway. We reach our destination faster, with more time to spare, but with hardly anything to learn or connect with... except maybe the gas stations (I mean premium subscriptions 😄).
Developers have slowly stopped posting questions on Stack Overflow and other forums (either that, or Google is playing tricks on me 🤨). And those who need solutions are finding them in their private ChatGPT windows. As this continues, what happens if there’s an outage of this AI feed, similar to the Blue Screen of Death not so long ago? All the Stack Overflow and forum community posts will be outdated and no longer support the cutting-edge technologies we rely on.
We might have to go back to square one and restart everything. So, as a developer, my biggest fear is that we may lose our human touch in solving things on our own or with the help of our peers and community.
Note: This post isn’t meant to raise any anxiety (I hope). It’s just the perspective of a regular software developer who follows conventional methods in solving problems and hunting down solutions in his day-to-day work.
Image Credits:
- Cover Image by aafdsm.com
- Image1 by unrealengine.com
- Image2 by techcrunch.com
- Image3 by developernation.net
- Image4 by pinterest.com
- Image5 by reddit.com
- Image6 by ovations.com.au - Shara Evans
- Image7 by shutterstock.com
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