2023-04-10: AI Mailbag

So we are a busy executives these days. Are we not?

Oh

Oh my goodness. So, uh, we've got, um, two mailbag questions, but we're gonna do them in two consecutive episodes. Let's do mailbag question number one, which is about, uh, somebody came, wrote in and said, Paul, why aren't you excited about ai?

Oh, I thought you're just gonna say, Paul, why aren't you excited?

Paul? Why is, why Paul, why, so I'm gonna play the theme song and then let's answer that question.

do it.

So the first one is from Dietrich and, uh, Hey, Paul and Rich. I'd like to express my disappointment after listening to the recent AI predictions episode. Mostly it's about Paul.

Boom.

love it. I love it. Um,

so

I'm specifically disappointed about Paul's dismissive approach to the AI programming tools.

Um, and c you seem part of the

pause m e

e hto,

like a tornado, but meh.

Interesting

there goes get in the shelter cuz the Manado is coming, um, that is storming across developers worldwide about AI assistance. So the problem Dietrich says, uh, or Dietrich, is that unless you have played with these tools yourself, you won't get a decent understanding of it. And I suspect Paul hasn't played with it himself yet. I suspect that once he does, he'll see.

whoa. Well, first off, shout out to WordPress, our sponsor for today's podcast.

Press. So, I, you know, I thought about this and I actually, uh, I do continually go in and play with the.

the rules.

Um,

you are a tinkerer. I can confirm that

it's not, so, first of all, none of this stuff really plugs into things that are currently I'm currently super engaged with. But I did give it a go the other day and I sat down and I was like, all right, help me write a chord progression for a song. Right. I a asked it to help me write a song.

Mm-hmm.

And you know, I've also been watching, there's someone named Simon Willison, who's a very like, well known Python programmer,

very well known. Yep.

Simon's all in on understanding this ecosystem. So I've sort of been like watching him figure it out as time goes on.

And

uh, the other thing is there's an organization I advise called Vets Who Code, and Jerome Hardaway, who's the principal there, uh, and the founder is works for, uh, Microsoft and is all in on this as a tool to enable developers.

Microsoft is all in on it.

this exactly. And so I do not deny that this is an integrated part of how people are gonna be working in the future. And I do like the, like the chat G P T Q and A, where it's like, Hey, you know, some people do chord progressions this way, and then it gives me the chord progressions. And some people do 'em now. It's useful. It's interesting. Here's where I'm struggling.

Mm.

I'm really good at finding information using typical search terms across a variety of internet places, including some places I pay for. Okay. And, um, I'm also good at like buying books and I feel that the actual skill acquisition, okay, so if the job is to get a task done without doing too much, like research mm-hmm. You can get to an okay first approximation, but it might be wrong, okay, with these tools.

Yeah. Um, I, I, I think, I think we're at a point right now where the, the medium has knocked us out of our. Not the

content teddy bears on the moon.

moon. It's just, it feels like my concierge for life just showed up and is interacting with me. And so I think we're in a, in a bit of a, a daze right now because of the way it seems to talk to us, not what it's saying to us. I really believe that right now. And, and it's, it's blowing people's minds because. We were Quora impressed us a dozen years

ago. Yes, correct.

correct. And I was like, wow. This is just knowledge and people sharing information. Now this is a, like we are in the, in the, in the sort of parlor, like slight of hand phase a little bit with this thing where it's feeling like. Like the world's computers converged on my weird question about GraphQL and it's, and not only that, it seems to be talking to me like personally and it's taken time out of its day to do it.

it's, that's, that's fine

with the like actual content that's being shipped over to me. Um, if this was just a search result interface that was new, it wouldn't be making this big of an impression, I

it would be very, very counter to what you want because some of the data's inaccurate.

Exactly, exactly. And so I think, I think the idea of building skill around that and, and what you're seeing a lot of right now, Here, here's a thread on how to talk to a thing.

Well, you know, so they're what I did watch, they're, um, have you seen the videos floating around? It's Balenciaga and they, they like take,

They're really good.

Yeah. They take people from movies and they have mid journey redraw them as Balenciaga models wearing Balenciaga outfits. So it's like Star Wars. But Mark Hamill's wearing like a really big puffy thing,

Yeah.

And then he says in Mark Hamill's voice, yeah, I have, I'm able to use the force much better through the power of fashion. Yeah. Okay. So

it's pretty hilarious and good and funny and clever, and Balenciaga knows exactly what it's

I don't think it's Balenciaga at all. Oh, no, no, no. This is just people making fun of Bolen. Fine. So there's a tutorial

good for the brand,

is like a six minute tutorial on how to make these, and it's just, you go from site to site, platform to platform. It gives you the prompts and so on. I, I think that what is miraculous to people, and I get this, is that content, and this is a thing that computers have always done, and I think that as AI enables this, this is very, very powerful.

very,

Computers always provide, they get exciting to people when they provide a shortcut. To making something that looks, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put it in quotes. Real. Okay. So, um, desktop publishing.

Sure.

the, in the late eighties and, and especially the early nineties, suddenly you could make something that looked like it came from a real publisher,

like a magazine. A

magazine looked, and in fact, what happened then, all the magazines started to use the desktop publishing tools, and now we don't think of it as desktop publishing. We think of it as InDesign. You know, like we, we just, you just use it. Um, photo manipulation. Yeah. Right. Used to be darkroom stuff, and it had to be really skilled. Then you didn't have to be skilled, you just had to pirate a copy of Photoshop.

kind of the history of tech

over and over? And I think that, and then what would happen is by getting into it, and this is the thing I love about computing, is that by getting into one of these subjects, like getting in the desktop publishing, you would end up learning a lot about the history of typography, how fonts work, all that stuff, if you were gonna be good at it.

Mm-hmm.

So you end up learning a whole process. That actually points back to history and is really important. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And I feel that like the balen make your own Balenciaga funny video and like actually forces people to think through the process of like, where should the edits be? What's funny, what should they say? Script, script writing. And

new skills in a way.

These are new skills and the computer, the shortcuts that cause everybody panic. They get metabolized in like a year now. So it'll be like, yeah, of course, of course we can do that. You can always make up Balenciaga video.

So go back to your earlier statement. Why are you skeptical?

I'm not skeptical. I'm just not, and I think what this person is reacting to, and this is, I'm gonna push back on this person. I feel that insufficient excitement is the great crime of our modern era and technology. If you're not excited about, I wasn't excited about crypto and people yelled at me for 10

This isn't you being defensive. No,

I think that what I, here's where I'm at. I'm not excited. I think that it's more computer. It's just more computer and it's, I'm gonna use these tools. I think more people will use them. I do not see it as the total revolutionary change in the way that, like, I, I think it's equivalent to, and, and this is not underplaying it by any means. It's equivalent to desktop publish. It's equivalent to Photoshop,

It's gonna, it's gonna automate away certain rote tasks.

That part's great. What I can't stand is what's driving me crazy, is everybody going, and then the computer will become intelligent, take over the world, and it will be like a nuclear wars

there's an article today in The Times about like, it's coming for the lawyers.

I'm on year 5 million of this irresistible subject in our world.

It's an irresistible subject. And let me, let me speak to the lawyer argument, which by the way, for really basic stuff, like a lease for an apartment

parking ticket, parking ticket. These are algorithms essentially

there's really basic things that we get done. Um, you know, uh, purchase agreement, uh, statement of work, like really basic stuff. But here's why. By the way that these have existed in the form of templates on, you know, certain websites that you can buy for like 50 bucks

for over a decade. Yeah.

But the real value of a lawyer, a good lawyer, right, is actually not the, the artifact they produce. It's the conversations beforehand and them being thoughtful about creating a good defense against bad news later and, Is like, there is not, not that conversation is a conversation. I'm

this from working with you. The, the, the function of the lawyer is that you are, it's not that they get rid of all risk, it's that they educate you about the risk so that you can make your own decisions

and they try to convince you, Hey look, I know this may seem like a bit of a forward thing to ask the other party, but I think this clause should be in there cuz it'll protect you from X or Y or Z. That dialogue is, is not going to go away. If anything, I mean, The legal profession is, is fascinating as like financial in instruments have gotten more complex and as m and a has become like just part of life in the world, mergers and acquisitions, the need for lawyers has gone.

Lawyers will tell you that.

Lawyers will tell you that. Here's the

You need more lawyers

if you think this is gonna bring down complexity, this wave, you're in for something. It's not going

to, no, it won't.

tech always seems like it's making things easier and it always creates more complexity. I don't mean that in a bad, negative way,

just, it just is what it is. We'll then do, you'll need tools to manage the other tools and I, I do think like,

great,

It's, it's better at teaching you a process than Stack Overflow is, right? A around like, here's how you make a JavaScript thing to do X, Y, and Z. It'll walk you through all

tailored responses are, I mean, that's a nice shortcut. That's a huge time saver.

like a cognitive comfort, right? Like you're just like, oh, okay, well let me try that. And it doesn't feel like you're not trying to figure everything out from first principles, which you often are when you're looking. Stack overflow. So I think like it, the fact that you can say, Hey, I'm in position A and I need to get to position B. What are the steps I have to take along the way, as opposed to you having to intuit those steps. I think that's a fantastic gift.

It is. But what it does is, here's what people I think always forget software when it innovates and eats away, it exists at the status quo. Once things settle down, it always gets bigger. The software gets bigger and more. Like right now, there. F s you know, 150 AI startups that are piling on top of this shift that's happened, which is like, okay, wait, I thought it's gonna make things simpler and easier. And uh, Adobe is an amazing example. Adobe software just gets bigger and bigger

Oh my God.

and, and you would think, okay, you know, we solved a bunch of things, let's streamline, and it never does. Instead it gets bigger. Right.

You cannot streamline.

Exactly. And so I don't know what the name of the DevOps ai profession job is gonna be in five years. It's gonna be some name, it's gonna be AIOps or

be ai op AIOps.

Yeah. It'll be something bizarre. But what, what we're, what humans create when they find, when they clear a room.

mm-hmm.

They always fill it with new shit that is just

life. It, it's just who we are. So I think what I would say is also like, I don't know, a technology that would truly get me excited at this point. I, I mean, I think if, if self-driving cars were real, that would actually blow my mind.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think because you've been through so many of these cycles. Yeah. I think that's what

it's like. That would be the

year old, I can totally sympathize with how they're feeling right now and thinking, oh my God, all I ha, because the 28 year old's context is TikTok,

is this old man saying that he's not excited about this is the most interesting. It is the most interesting thing happening.

right now. It is the most interesting and, and, but the idea of, oh my goodness, we won't be typing anymore. We'll just stare into a camera and it'll intuit what we need. That's, that's just never how it goes.

person is asking me, you know, why, essentially what they're saying is, why are you a middle aged person in the technology industry? And all I can say is because I am a 48 year old person in the technology industry, I enjoy

watching it. It's exciting to see something new. Take hold. It's a weird time. I, I'll, I'll

freaking,

I'll lay it out right here. This is way more interesting and frankly credible than crypto.

Well, it, it actually makes sense. It lets you do things you couldn't do before. Whereas crypto you, it was like, yes, you're now a market. Like, it was like, oh, I didn't

And it's coming. The future is coming. It's not here yet, but the

Whereas this, it's like, wow, that I never saw a dog and a hat on the moon

I'm enjoying it. I'm enjoying watching it all kind of swirl. It's fun. Okay.

Well, I don't know if we gave that person what they were looking for, but I did appreciate the email. I love getting called on the carpet a little bit. It's good for me.

It reminds me of like the seventh Transformer movie trailer versus the third

Oh, the AI excitement you mean? Yeah, yeah,

glad there's excitement and you still kind of go, whoa, I didn't expect the building to kind of flip over on its side like that.

I have a friend who once ironically, wanted to go see a Transformer movie. He was kind of curious and so we went.

Yeah.

And he's like a sensitive, thoughtful guy. And about 10 minutes in and he like realized like, we gotta go see this. This is like America. We gotta figure this out. And I'm like, all right man, I'll go. So we went, it was big movie theater volume was up loud and about 10 minutes in he turned to me. He is like, we should just go, this is real. No, no. Cuz it's just like cl, cl, cl. And I'm like, I turned to him and I. Oh, we're here now.

We're seeing this

we're, we're gonna see like the bearded stealth bomber transformer. So anyway, yes. Um, it is, uh, it, look, it's gonna be great. I lo I actually really love this new weird technology. It drives me bananas that once again, everyone's decided that because a computer can do a parlor trick, it's actually an intelligent super baby. Um, but I've now been, I'm on like year, this is like the 10th time that's happened. Yeah. So, We go, good luck.

Have a lovely day. Bye. Good job.