Let me just go on a little rant here for a second as I scream into the void about how AI is slowly eating everything I love and I feel like I'm being swallowed up too.
To be clear about my opinion of AI; I find that it's not always useless like people enjoy saying it is, but it's so... hollow. And it's easy to stop thinking when you use it, so even at work, where I'm required to use it, I'm using it sparingly and with the requirement that I check what it spits out and I try my best to learn and internalize the information rather than just passing it along mindlessly.
So my boss has always liked AI. For the past year he's been getting more and more involved, going from vibe coding to agentic agents to multiple agentic agents. At first we were just being pushed to try it out. Incorporate it occasionally, do a bit of research with it, have it write a message, etc etc etc.
And all the while we were getting these speeches that steadily got more and more alarming.
No, your job will not be in jeopardy because of AI, just keep working hard and do good.
AI will speed you up, so while you're not REQUIRED to use AI, you'll need to keep up with it.
AI is the only way you can keep up with AI so you have to use it, or else we'll replace you with someone who will use it.
Here's the top ten companies that have cut down their work force via AI, I just felt like bringing that up today
Followed by the absolutely wild statement:
Don't worry, though, if you embrace AI you won't be fired because the only ones being fired are the ones who refused to join the bandwagon
Which, y'know, doesn't quite feel like an accurate statement! I'm the kind of person who will put a lot of faith into people when I shouldn't but, crazily enough, I don't feel very comforted by this declaration.
I wanna believe the guy's heart is in the right place, but now it's eerily sounding like he's working HIMSELF into the thought of how downsizing would work. Which doesn't bode well for me, the newest person on the team.
Maybe I'm reading too far into it, but I'm going to keep sending out my resume and working on some portfolio projects and hope somewhere nicer picks me up. They have to be out there.
It's scary out here for me at the moment. Everyone and everything I love is held up by my career and it doesn't feel exactly stable at the moment. In the meantime, this horrible thing has wormed its way into my brain to the point where I often wonder "could AI do this better/faster?" when I'm learning things and it eats away at me every day. The joy of creation is so dampened by that thought. I never used to compare myself to other people but now I'm not comparing myself to other people, I'm comparing myself to the idea that there is a "technically right" way to do the things I want to do.