Why are so many companies pushing for AI adoption by developers?
Based on public news and stuff happening at my workplace, there seems to be a real or at least told narrative, that developers need to take up AI as a new technology.
But why? If AI is good, adoption won't require convincing, it would be harder to prevent developers from using AI in places you wouldn't want them to use it.
I recently saw a PM newsletter that was detailing how to encourage and "reward" LLM adoption in teams which also kind of stuck out to me. These are genuinely useful but limited tools that now have to live up to huge promises and valuations so tech leadership is trying to force adoption.
tl;dr: those of us not heavily invested in AI need "convincing" because the technology is almost all down-side with little up-side.
We can start with bosses imposing which tools we use. We usually don't like that. Especially when these mandates are accompanied by unreasonable expectations (productivity will increase by 50%! You'll become a 10x developer!). Now you're under even more pressure than before, with no real possibility of satisfying those expectations. Makes for a wonderful work environment, I'm sure.
Follow that up with the extremely negative social externalities AI brings to the table: resource exploitation in poorer neighborhoods, labor exploitation in poor nations, etc. In WV, where I live, the legislature have already stripped communities of their political rights, with the goal of being more "data-center friendly", which to me sums up AI rather nicely: an anti-democratic, anti-people, big-investor-friendly technology.
All of the money spent on AI hardware and training models needs ROI.
Indeed. AI companies are practically giving away their product in some cases. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44825464 What's going to happen when investors clamp down and demand that ROI?
Of course people will need convincing. People hate change.
That's not it at all. Past advances in developer tools didn't need this sort of force-feeding because developers saw the value and willingly adopted them. The "forcing" was the developers demanding the tools from their employers.
This time, it's exactly backwards. I posit that's because there is no clear value in excess of the costs with these tools.
https://ghuntley.com/ngmi/
Nice fairytale. You could make similar stories and replace AI with "stimulant" "SCRUM" or "learning touch typing and emacs"
There is a point in there for sure. But I'm yet to meet a Luddite IRL. It's the extent of AI use that differs and where people want to use it. I think AI can fold into "tool to solve problems and make impact" and we can focus on solving problems again and AI can be a part of that.
I’ve read some blog posts by Geoff and there’s a useful idea here but it’s surrounded by so much storytelling.
To dig up the lede: LLMs are proving useful in some instances, consider staying abreast of developments here to find ways to do a better job as time goes by. The exact nature of “better job” and the timeframe along which that reveals itself are left as exercises for the reader
Because they see AI as the gateway to your invitation of course. Money only cares about money/ROI. A bunch of tech CEOs in finance circles have hyped up AI to drive adoption, more "conventional" business/management types buy into the hype and dive in. Do pilot programs. If it works, great, start planning the downsize... If it doesn't...well it will work, so why even spend the cycles thinking on it?
s/invitation/obviation
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