[Cool Picture by DALL-E]

I said I’d write about AI next, and while I’ve thought of a few topics since then, let’s hit the A.I. or AI or Artificial Intelligence thing. Seems to be a popular topic, for both those who see it as solving the world’s problems to those who see the end of the world as we know it (credit to R.E.M. for a great song). I’m somewhere in the middle of this bell curve as I see both sides, but looking back on history, I figure we’re going to settle in that 1 Standard Deviation area. In other words, I’m not getting all worked up either way.

As I’ve said before, I follow charts partially because I believe history repeats itself. Not exactly, but on a general level. Wars are fought over religion, new arrivals to a country are shunned for being different, yada, yada, yada. We’re back to cycles and the many things I’ve preached here before. I’m not sure if I’ve said it outright, but 90% of the things we think of as fires just aren’t. I carry this perspective not just in the markets, but within my Product Management career as well. Instead of using a bunch of energy running in circles saying, ‘The sky is falling,’ I’d rather use that same energy to take a step back and assess the realities of the situation at hand and find solutions to the problem.

As for AI, let’s start with the doom and gloom side. That way we can end on a high note. Throughout history, new discoveries and inventions have threatened everything from our livelihoods to our very existence, and yet we’re still here…and I get to write about it. I don’t remember reading about this specifically, but I’m guessing the invention of a firearm was an example of humanity itself is threatened. Suddenly, I can attack from a distance on an individual level. Sounds scary as heck. But then we gave those guns to the good guys and used them to defend the very society we thought we would end. And then came the atom bomb and the destruction it could bring in one fell swoop. We’re still here, thankfully.

A recent refrain has been from people that write code, ‘AI is going to make me obsolete.’ A bit dramatic, no? Rubber tires put ‘wheelwrights’ out of business. Internal combustion engines created an overabundance of farriers, blacksmiths specializing in horseshoes. The entire industrial revolution inspired fear across countless professions. In my career, we shut down the trading pits and somehow commodity trading volumes have exploded from that time. With that volume comes liquidity and opportunity. Somehow, we’ve all adapted, survived, and thrived no matter the advancement.

I’ve used ChatGPT to help write some Powershell and Python scripts as well as code for charts. It works. It gets me where I want to be without actually writing code. However, an engineer could probably debug that code a lot faster than I did, and in all the cool advanced programming languages. Debugging is a necessity. Remember, AI’s programming capabilities are only as good as the prompts and along the way you need to be able to see if it’s actually working as desired as opposed to working as designed. Sometimes when engineers write code to my specifications it doesn’t do what I wanted it to. My last 2 stops we’ve adopted a bug report ticket code of WAPD, working as poorly designed. In these cases, it’s not actually a bug. Something was just missing in the spec because the software is doing what was written down, that written spec is what told the engineer to program the wrong thing.

So, you need a babysitter, and you need a good one. Can a Product Manager do it? To an extent. Can an Engineer do it? Also, to an extent. Can they together make software that’s better and do it faster than in the past? I’m going to say yes. So now we’ve turned the idea of putting us all out of jobs to thinking about the opportunities that AI can open up, just in software development.

Now let’s branch out. Let’s put the panic and the ‘I, Robot’ hysteria to the side for a moment. Let’s look at the opportunity. Let’s think of this like trading. The risk/reward needs to balance to the reward side. In this case we may not have a choice as, well, the I, Robot fear can always be the Black Swan in the room, but nonetheless I’d rather focus on the positive. Remember how I began this thing?…lol

So here’s the positive. Temperature, water, disease, food, shelter, energy…Get the idea?  We’ve got a lot of problems to solve in this world. I’m not talking about the political problems, that’s for someone else’s blog. I’m speaking of the problems we face over time. We’ve had civilization for a few thousand years. Not much in the big scheme, but thinking about average life expectancy over time, I’d like to think that there’s a bunch of generations left before the next stage of evolution.

To accomplish this feat, we’re going to need some advancements that we cannot even imagine or envision now. Personally, I think curing some longstanding vicious diseases in the near term would be universally appreciated. Who hasn’t been touched in some way by cancer? Who doesn’t wish they didn’t have to think about that ever happening again? Many of the things I mentioned will certainly impact my daughter’s generation more than mine. They worry about global warming. They worry about not enough water. They worry about safe, abundant, cheap energy sources. These are long term problems that need to be faced in the short term.

AI can help with this! The medical profession is expressing excitement over the idea of faster diagnoses, faster drug development, and better predictive preventative care. Examples exist of trials of drugs being done much sooner as so much more data can be processed prior to that point in a fraction of the time it previously took. From the Fitbit to the Apple watch, we’re already making progress on a broad level. Again, this will speed that progress along to better implementations.

Electric cars seemed to be taking over just a couple of years ago. Is that really the best solution? Not in its current state. The US built an interstate highway system based on the idea that you can pull in, fill up and continue your trip…maybe with a Big Mac and fries thrown in. Electric cars aren’t there yet. The distance claims are not close to real world results…kind of like back-testing trading models, honestly. What seems good in theory doesn’t always translate on implementation. Now, get some better cheaper batteries, ones that don’t also lead to uninsurable vehicles and maybe we have a start. I’d rather know in 2 years than in 10.

The examples are endless. So just for a change, just for shits and giggles, let’s lean on the side of optimism. Let’s think about the benefits scary advancements have brought in the past and will, no doubt, bring in the future. There’s always a downside. But somehow, we find ways to navigate those hurdles, and often use these same technologies to solve the problems they created, like the entire auto-mechanic profession. So, get creative, think about how to harness this new technology to your advantage. You may find you accomplish more than ever before, and even wonder how you ever got along without it.