Drowning below the LLM
Seriously how am I supposed to keep up with all this!?
You thought it was so over, but we’re so back.
As a newsletter about the changing world, I have to talk about AI at some point. But… how? Honestly how? There are new tools, new advancements, and new prompt injections at an hourly rate.
Ben’s Bytes is a daily newsletter covering the latest in AI, and I can’t even read that without getting overwhelmed!
It seems AI is going to be everywhere all at once. In Google Drive. In Microsoft office. In Github, but with even more zing and more pep.
ChatGPT is launching a plugin store, and it could be a game changer. some people think this is as big of a shift as the ios app store back in 2008. Giving ChatGPT the ability to write & execute code, to read and write on the internet, feels huge.
Developers, sometimes you try to jump into a technological window
There’s a space when being an early adopter of new technology can be a huge boon. Look at the first iOS developers building the first apps. They made a mint. AI could be the same thing. Or it could be just a productivity tool, or it’s going to kill us all. Who’s to say?
How many times in one career do you get to be one of the first in an app store?
Remember DeFi summer? Remember web3? Remember the metaverse?
Technology windows are like meme stocks, once you know they’re going to succeed you’re already too late. So you have to make bets and hope it works out. I had a lot of freelancing success being one of the first Angular developers in my community, as an early adopter of modern web application frameworks. I also wasted a summer learning Adobe Flex. Ever heard of adobe flex? Exactly. The iOS guys were better than me at identifying the Flash killer.
So what am I, as a senior software engineer / not-a-journalist-but-I-play-one-online? I feel behind as soon as I start.
When looking at a potential technological window, where does one begin? here are the questions I am trying to answer:
what are ways I can use AI to increase productivity today?
what are useful tips/tricks/prompts I should be aware of?
what opportunities exist for developers in the current ecosystem?
how might AI change the work I’m doing currently?
how can I keep up with the rapid rate of change?
how much of my time and energy should I dedicate to this?
what are the risks of using AI in my work?
what are the societal and existential risks of AI?
one strategy could be to try and follow people who are high signal and trust their curation. I’ve been cribbing from Swyx mostly, author of the Latent Space substack. He has a collection of AI notes and a high-signal Twitter list. At least it’s a start.
Probably time to start building something. I don’t know what. But I can’t shake the feeling that is going to change something.
I’m reminded of a line from the Ribbonfarm post about premium mediocre:
There lies the terrifying structural boundary of our times — the API. Today, you’re either above the API or below the API
Now the boundaries are moving. You’re either above the LLM or below the LLM
