AI is *just* next-gen automation

The initial buzz around AI seems to be finally dying down at least a little, though of course just about every company I interact with seems to be interested in selling me their AI tooling. Most of which seem to be a fairly thin wrapper around one of the big LLM’s.

The hype around all software developers being replaced by AI seems to have melted away, and even amongst senior developers use of tools like co-pilot seems to have mostly fizzled out (though I’m sure there are exceptions to this). It’s certainly not a must-have tool.

AI doomsday predictions have also failed to come to pass, and no serious person with an ounce of technical nous seems much concerned with this any more.

It is an enormous technological breakthrough though, enabling automation to be brought to areas where that would have previously been near unthinkable. I have often thought of this comic xkcd.com/1425 particularly when explaining to non-technical people how some things are easy, others near-impossible – and how recognising the difference can be difficult for non-technical types. What’s wild about that comic, ten-years on, is that thanks to LLM’s – identifying birds in images would barely be an afternoons work.

That’s a serious generational leap.