How AI will change your job as a builder
And other musings on how to adapt in a fast-changing landscape
It’s finally here, and it’s going to change everything. Taylor Swift’s Era Tour, right? Well yes! But actually no, I’m talking about AI and how it’s going to fundamentally change your job as you know it. If you landed here based on the promise of hearing more about Taylor Swift, I get it, scroll to the bottom to see AI write a song in TS lyrical style about the future of AI - it’s pretty weird. But if you’re here to nerd out over how fast AI is developing, and how it’s going to rock much of the built world as we know it, read on dear builder!
What is happening? / Why is it happening now?
Unless you’re living in a hole (lucky!), you’ve heard about and likely experienced the sudden acceleration around AI. We’ve been hearing that “it was coming” for some time now. And we’ve even been using it in some obvious, and other non-obvious ways. You might have noticed it:
On TikTok, where the algorithms show you content that is more and more tailored to your unique interests.
In Gmail, with autocomplete helping you finish your emails faster.
On Netflix, when the images of the content you watch look different than your partner’s.
Or, on LinkedIn when it suggests simple text responses to messages to help facilitate conversations faster.
And a million other really simple ways that enhance already well-entrenched user behaviors and products. Those examples are already used by billions of people, but they aren’t that obvious, or more importantly, that exciting. “See it to believe it” is very real to the lay consumer, so to not be wow’d is to not notice.
I think the real leaps in AI are coming soon, when we move beyond feature embellishments to the technology becoming the feature itself. Researchers are calling this the “golden decade” for AI because of our newly un-gated progress. With advancements in deep learning and new developments on hardware that can power more computationally intensive AI models, more data can be applied in new ways which equates to more progress more quickly. That big snowball was hard to push over the top of the hill, but it’s all downhill from here baby.
As a builder, I LOVE moments like these, where technology shows up at your front door and rings your doorbell. Ding dong! When theory crosses the chasm and you experience it in action. These moments are fun to be a part of because they create a community moment where we come together around the shared experience of having our minds blown.
Moments like these remind me of the first time I booted up AOL and got my first DM. It was the the first time I remember watching technology get better in real time, watch my friends trying it out, and all of us bonding over the shared experience of trying something groundbreaking together.
So as a former early AOL adopter (put this on my tombstone), I can proudly state that trying shiny new tech is as cool today as it was then. And these AI leaps are no different.
But, what does this mean for builders?
Remember last Fall when Bitcoin was at like $50,000, Ethereum was pre-merge and everyone we knew was dropping everything to build web3? Well I was about to make a job change and was exploring both web3 paths and traditional consumer paths and I was torn. On one hand, web3 was hot and “the future”, but it still felt a long way from being consumer-friendly. And consumer-facing felt like a losing game with all the energy and talent pouring into web3. After much research, some writing, and a dash of hand-wringing, I stayed in my well-trodden consumer lane and honestly haven’t looked back.
Why am I telling you this story in this article that is not about web3? Because I did a thing that you should be doing too, I was riding the change wave. I was noticing an emergent trend and learning everything I could about said new trend, and figuring out how it impacted me.
If you are a builder, one of the most important things you can do is continuously ride the change wave. What does that mean? It means anticipating, learning about, and getting on board with changes in our industry. If this AI moment is a change wave, then learn how to surf it. Cowabunga baby.
How do you ride the change wave?
If you’re reading this I’m assuming you’re either building products or building your career and both will be impacted by AI. Companies will need to adapt or be replaced with new technology that uses AI to enhance their products. AI will also automate parts of people’s jobs to make their output higher, and it’ll force people to sharpen the skills that AI can’t replace. So how do you ride that change wave?
Teach yourself how to notice new technology trends
Follow prominent VCs on Twitter. Read new books about technology. Subscribe to newsletters that talk about technology. Plug yourself in and pay attention.
Learn how to evaluate new technology trends
If you notice change brewing, roll-up to a whiteboard and brainstorm around these prompts:
How might this new technology impact what I’m working on? How might it help? How might it hurt?
How might this new technology impact how I work?
How might competitors utilize this new technology in ways that could improve their products?
How might it add more value to your target customer or <insert user that’s important to you>?
Apply those learnings to your work
Based on what you’ve brainstormed, think through how you can uniquely apply and adapt to what you’ve just uncovered. This will obviously be different based on the technology you’re thinking about, what you’re building, the unique needs of your customer, etc. Charge the path quickly to application-mode, then pause.
Apply a growth mindset
An abundance mindset helps you be more creative, more agile, and more fun when change comes knocking. Be reflective and understand your limits, and how this technology can help you around them. Sharpen the skills that this technology cannot replace.
Ask hard questions
And finally, think through the ethical implications of new technology. Push others around you to do the same. Don’t adopt too quickly before you’ve worked through what it means and its impact on the world around you. In the same way that not acting on emergent trends can be devastating, acting too fast can be too.
Finally, and for fun, how have I been “riding the change wave?”
To practice what I’m preaching here, here’s how I am keeping tabs on what’s new:
I ran a real-life test between human and machine. I was riveted to see how fast AI image generation is moving, and wanted to see if I could use it for the header of this article. I worked with an illustrator, gave her a simple prompt and used DALL-E for an AI alternative. The results are below. I liked the human-generated illustration more, so I chose it as the header for this article. Good reminder that today’s AI has limits, but where will it be in a month, a year, and beyond? Also, good nudge for me to get better at prompt generation where I clearly have room to grow.
Used GPT-3 to write a poem about product management and AI in the lyrical style of Taylor Swift. It’s not bad!
I also asked AI to write this exact newsletter post. More specifically, I asked copy.ai to write an article about this topic. Here’s the full article with no editing. Definitely not publishable, as it lacks depth and examples, but a great starting point for a writer. Again I chose to use the human-generated content (this time by moi!).
I joined the waitlist to use Notion’s new AI beta. Don’t worry, I’m number 274,762 in line.
And finally, I tried the AI Time Machine by MyHeritage. I can’t resist seeing myself as a pilgrim and as if Gustav Klimt painted me in gold. Yes, I paid twelve dollars for this, no you are not at liberty to judge me for it because I’m riding the change wave, okay?!
And all of this play was in the last month alone. Try it, have fun with it, and continue to ask yourself how it’ll change the world around you. Share in the comments what you’ve been playing around with, I’m dying to know 👇🏻
-Nickey
Article image by Veranika Zhuraulevich