You know this already (otherwise you wouldn't subscribe here). This is not a normal or shall I say predictable newsletter/blog. I'm not here to give you a tech update or a too familiar opinion. What I care about is to plainly write about my personal truth and observations.
Last time I wrote about AI is already a couple months ago, a lot has changed since. Every day there is a new announcement, a new tool, and when I say every day, that's not even a figure of speech, it's the actual reality. I can barely even keep up myself at this point, we're all stretched in a thousand directions... everyone and everything wants our attention. The news, the platforms, the algorithms, we need to stay updated at all times. What's happening politically? Is my job still safe tomorrow? Is Design dead? Is design the ultimate advantage? What's the new latest tool? What's the trend? Am I cool anymore? Is the internet dead? Are we alive?
If you're wondering if you're behind, probably, and most certainly behind of tomorrow, and that's all you need to know really.
My latest observations:
Engineering and productivity is the new end boss.
AI priorities are constantly shifting, but engineering (and software design to a degree) is the current focus. There's just so much material to train on, we'd be stupid not to. And it has by far the biggest economic impact. We invented many complicated languages to talk to computers, and now we're building a translator for everyone so everyone can talk to computers in their own language. And in the process of it, we're collecting more data to make the translator even better.
Copywriting or creative writing as singular output from LLMs was never the end goal because it's too vague, too subjective and dependent on the person who speaks those words. Of course, in the short run the internet will get overrun by bots and AI written content. The same way the internet got overrun by templated SEO copywriting. The garbage was all around long before we even had AI.
Design or any other actual problem solving skills? Funny enough, not a lot is happening here in the AI space. Sure, there are some new tools here or there, most of them in the design engineering category, so we can't count them because they're also part of the engineering focus. But pure graphic programs? Barely anything new on the horizon. The whole blueprint/nodes apps feel more like an intermediary step because we haven't fully figured out what to do yet. The technology is still too slow, the feedback loop not short enough to venture in a more exciting direction. Nobody has figured out "the new canvas" just yet.
Most of the graphic driven tools feel more like "Templates 2.0" but with a little personalization sprinkled on top.
In fact, the engineering part is the part that excites me. I am not excited to use AI for my design tasks really. Frankly, I'm really good at those tasks and using AI would diminish the work I'm doing. But engineering? I'm excited to dive into that more than anything. And I am sure many people feel that way.
It's also important to point out that we all get different meanings from different parts of work. For example, as a designer myself I always saw engineering as the necessary evil. I don't care what the code looks like, as long as it runs fast, reliant and secure. However I understand that for some engineers, there's an art to it. And I can imagine, for many engineers Design used to be the necessary evil, because they don't see in it what I see in it. This is of course a larger conversation, but generally we tend to value things differently.
And I think this is one of the most important parts to mention: DO NOT use AI to automate or take away the joy for THE THING you used to have. Because if you do this, you will eventually lose your joy entirely. I try to use AI for the things I do NOT want to do. Why would you try to automate yourself out of a job you love doing? I get it, it's a truly difficult time if your meaning was derived from writing code. I am not so sure what the solution is here, because it's not as easy as it is with writing or designing, which may carry inherently more meaning by default to the average viewer.
I also noticed that whenever I use AI for design work, I never really feel proud of what I do. I could be doing the most impressive 3D rendering (where I had to hire a 3D designer before) and I directed it entirely the way I'd direct a 3D designer, but the feeling I have afterwards is.... nothing, haha, I truly don't care. I made it, it's done, moving on. And I think this feeling of "I don't care" is dangerous when it happens too often. There is no real reward feeling in my brain anymore, because I can now do anything I want, whenever I want, and it's not really hard either. It's like teleporting on top of a mountain instead of climbing it. The teleporting felt kind of magical at first, but then it's just my everyday. Zero struggle. No reward.
Right now, AI has a primary goal of increasing our productivity. Many people still believe AI is this magical pill that makes work go away or makes you work less.... quite the opposite, it's gonna make you work MORE! Because people will be doing 10 roles at once now, without even noticing, for now....
There has never been more work really. I'm not saying good work, but there's been more work. In fact, you can't really do less anymore, it has to be significantly more than before if you want to compete with anyone.
As a Designer I may take on engineering now (it's adjacent anyway). As a developer you have to take on design, and copywriting. The copywriter has already picked up 3D, art direction and video production now as well. There's no specialization anymore, at least not for the masses. Ironically enough this puts us roughly at the beginning of the internet again, we used to call them "webmasters." They designed, coded, did 3D, strategized and told stories at the same time, just on a new medium that housed it all. We're back to square one. That's exciting for some, frustrating for others. Depends what you did the past 20 years and where you came in.
Specialization is of course still alive, but once again reserved for the very best and very few. But people can execute across disciplines now, and in a highly competitive market the baseline is being a jack of all trades, and the exception is the Master of One. Specialists are fewer because the bar moved up and the middle thinned out.
In a very fun way, you could say: Everything changes, and nothing really does.
The biggest change is that design and engineering is being commoditized even further. But none of it is particularly new, which is why I like the "Templates 2.0" term because that's really what it is for me if you look at all the end products. We're just creating more and more templates for "normal" people to use, so they too can be designers or engineers.
In the end, you'll still need experts, you need people who're obsessive about their work, you need people who clean up the mess. Just because everyone can vibe code an app now in their lunch break doesn't mean they're good at it, doesn't mean they will quit their job because of it, and also doesn't mean they want to maintain that same app a month later.
If all of this is positive or negative... I don't know, I am still making up my mind. In the end, it doesn't really matter because the only winner in this game are the big corporations who'll be selling tokens to everyone. Nothing will really change for the average person, some old jobs will be gone, new jobs will be created. Some bad, some good. Nobody is going to work less, we will all work more, the algorithms are hungry. In fact, that is perhaps the only negative part of it (to me), because there is now so much noise, you have to compete by contributing even more noise because the signal will either be drowned, or there is a lack of collective appreciation or understanding to what a true signal is. But then again, none of this is new and it's always been like this across many different industries. That's why fast food is big, and small good restaurants are small. That's why SHEIN fashion and Amazon is massive, and small quality goods are small and often unknown and unseen.
I also have to admit...
I am starting to get a bit bored by the AI conversation, even just writing about it here myself. I will promise to myself to write less about it, because it kind of feels like the same thing every time.
The facts are: We know AI will get better, a lot. Whatever dream or nightmare you can think about, it will happen. I promise. Anything that can't be done with AI right now is mostly due to moral constraints (don't worry, we're losing them quickly) or simply computing resources. At one point, a very small handful of companies will win the race, one of which I believe is and will be Google.
Another fact (imo) is that the real innovation behind AI are tokens. Or differently put, a new mythical currency in which big companies can charge for computation of whatever really. We used to pay for storage, or traffic, now we pay for tokens too. It's truly beautiful if you think about it, because it's the wet micro-payments dream come true. Every button in your app might soon cost you tokens.
But without becoming too cynical here: See it as a tool. Use it, and don't let it use you. Find a use case for you, and then really USE it the way it makes YOU happy and whatever makes YOU sleep well at night. I guess that what it really comes down to.
For me? I'm not sure yet but I hope it helps me to be less online and focus more on the things that matter. I've been working on the internet for so long now, I'm starting to get more and more interested in other things. The Escape Machine was one of those recent projects that made me feel this even more. I want to do more analog things again. Like a book, physical things that may outlast me. And in a secret kind of self-serving way, I'm building mymind to be that place for me to help me navigate whatever is going to be my new focus. I have so many dreams, I will tell you all about them when the time is right.
Thank you for reading and keep creating.
Yours truly,
Tobias
