Are you letting AI control you?

AI,

It's incredible how two letters can bring up so much emotion.  Excitement for the new advances we can make as a society, the potential for people to make more money then they ever dreamed possible, power, scarcity, and worst of all - Fear. I doubt there is a space that isn't being changed by the introduction of this technology. It is a tsunami that is hitting the entire world and whether we like it or not it's coming straight for us. 

It was only a few short years ago when being a Programmer was number one job on the US News 100 best job list. I felt like I had finally "made it" and it was an incredible feeling. Being in such a highly coveted position, finally achieving the success that I had earned through endless hours of studying, late nights, long on call shifts, tears, headaches, self help and therapy journeys to overcome the soul crushing imposter syndrome. I remember the pride I felt reading that article thinking it was all worth it because I was finally at the top.  Oh, but we all know too well that the world has a way of humbling each and every one of us. 

Now, at a time in my career when I thought I could finally relax and take a deep breath, the exact opposite is happening.  Of course the text book roadmap plan is to study, learn, grind, be the best of the best an AI master, get ahead of the curve to beat out the competition, and whatever you do make sure you keep up the break neck pace.  The problem for me is that I can't live my life like that any longer. I had a medical scare about a year ago and it made me realized that my entire life was being consumed by my career. I refuse to be the person who in my final breaths of this beautiful life thinks "I missed my whole life because all I ever did was work". What about you?

So what do we do now? We don't let the Fear win. 

It has been a very eye opening experience the past few years watching how the people who control the AI narrative control the people.  How many articles and interviews are are there out there saying "AI is coming for your job".  The truth is that nobody knows what the future brings, but the people that are spreading these messages of fear are also the people who are reaping the financial benefits from AI. The truth is that FEAR IS A TRAP to keep you scared. 

Does the fear help? Does the fear make you learn faster or protect you from an undesirable future? No, it does nothing but keep you paralyzed, and in fact it does the exact opposite of protection. It keeps you small, stuck and in a victim mentality. The problem with that type of mental state is that it does have the power to shape your future in a very negative way. You spin your wheels endlessly working harder and harder to prevent this negative future. You end up running yourself into the ground, burning yourself out, hurting your mental health and possibly even your physical health in the process. 

So what is the alternative? Just think positive? Does this mean just give up and live in this fairy tail world where everything is fine? No, not at all. This is reality, life is changing and you have to keep putting one foot in front of the other every day.  You need to take small, reasonable steps and work on healthy ways of obtaining new skills while maintaining balance. It's not doomsday, even though the internet will love to you tell it is. It it only change. You do not have the power to control this change but you do have the power to control your mind during these changes. 

So what are my small, reasonable steps that I am taking to keep my software development career in a trajectory that I like? For me it's finding the parts of the industry that still excite me and focusing my learning time on those parts. I found some courses I enjoy on using AI for design because I love the beauty in the web.  It don't work on design in my current role, but understanding how to use AI in something that excites me is still learning how to work with and train it. For the learning that I absolutely need but I don't love as much, I find small tutorials that break up the fundamentals in easy digestible pieces. I'm learning the basics of how ML works and keeping an eye on trends with data models, but I don't want a career in Machine Learning or Data Science so I am not going to burn myself out forcing myself to deeply learn things I don't want to move toward. 

I am learning ways to improve my speed and productivity, in my current role, using the AI tools that I have access to.  Yes, copilot writes a large portion of the code I used to write from scratch, but it still needs me to piece the things together. It still requires me to know how and why the code works. I utilize AI to help me with the code, not just let it blindly write everything without knowing exactly what its doing. I still control the logic and what needs to be implemented. I spend more of time asking AI to analyze the code and explain to me why one pattern is better then other ways for each specific use case. Much to my own surprise it has been making me a better Software Developer. I'm not wasting my time copy and pasting from stack overflow and looking for examples or spending hours troubleshooting only to find out there was colon instead of a semicolon. I'm spending my time thinking about what guardrails I need to put in place to make a superior product and create less bugs. 

Additionally I subscribe to an AI newsletter, and follow some slack channels, and only when I am in a good balanced headspace do I read them. When I am in a place of fear it doesn't do any good to try and force the knowledge. It's scientifically proven ours brains don't function optimally when we are in a state of fear, it temporarily impairs the cerebral cortex. Which means you are so much better off working to reduce the fear then trying and digest information at that moment. 

My job is to do my best to balance learning with mental health and prioritizing my life as well. I work on creative hobbies outside of work not just studying all of the time because that type of grueling lifestyle is not sustainable for any sort of a meaningful life. We are more then our jobs and when we have that sort of mental balance we become better in all areas of our lives. 

It's all about keeping your self in a good place and then taking action when you are. Don't let the fear win, don't let it paralyze you because your life is way too valuable to live in a world like that.  

Will all of this save my career? I have no idea, but what I am certain of is that we are very resilient creatures and I know this is the best way for me to move forward. If it doesn't go in the way I hope, then I know that I will have the mental resilience to handle whatever the future may bring.