So this blog is something a little bit different, it is food for thought, a theory that I have stumbled upon… the demise of the developer!
Since the industrial revolution humans have created machinery and tools which have become more advanced at an ever increasing speed, from the first steam engine to the latest hybrid, rotary and jet engines, from the first ever computer to the smart phone. This has enabled us to mass produce products in vast quantities, with increased accuracy, at a reduced cost.
We are entering the age of information and a new revolution is happening as we speak right before our eyes. Everything we use is becoming connected, requiring software to work and the way we consume things is changing as we are starting to pay for an ongoing service rather than purchasing a product. This enables us to have the latest product continuously and allows manufacturers to communicate with us and the product throughout the lifecycle of the product, improving the performance and experience we have with the things we own.
However, there has been a negative effect from all of this new technology, it has resulted in decreased manual skills. The more we rely on machines, robots and computers to do our work for us, the less we require manual skill to survive. Going back, 30, 40 or 50 years ago having a trade was considered all important – skilled labourers, engineers and technicians were amongst the highest paid and valued citizens.
In the late 90’s, early 00’s there was a noticeable shift. I was born in the 80’s, grew up in the 90’s and developed my trade as an electrical engineer in the 00’s, looking back I can remember the shift. When I started my apprenticeship in the year 2000, I can clearly remember most of my peers reiterating ‘get a trade, once you have a trade you will be made for life’, but by the end of my apprenticeship in 2004, it has all the changed.
The focus had switched to computers, ‘computers are the future. Get a job in computers and you will be made for life’ – and they were right! Developers have taken over skilled manual trades as some of the highest paid jobs in the world, developers have the power to make your highly automated machinery and software to do exactly what you want, adding value to the product whilst making themselves invaluable…. for now.
The Holy Grail for developers around the world is to create true artificial intelligence (AI). True AI is most simply and easily put as the ability to learn, a computer that can re-program itself and make itself more advanced, and there is a race between countries and superpowers to develop this technology. There is a problem however… the race for true AI may spell the end for the developer. The thing is, as soon as a computer can program itself to learn, it will learn at an ever increasing rate. The rate of learning could become so advanced that we lose control all together. Think of it as multiplying, 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x, 32x, 64x, every time it develops itself, it is increasing the capacity to develop itself further and faster. Developers will become surplus to requirements in a similar fashion to machinists and fabricators but probably at a much more alarming speed.
I will leave this hypothesis here for you to muse over, but I would like to leave you on a positive note and this food for thought.
After this phase of the revolution, will engineers find themselves of value again, not for their ability to construct, fabricate or develop but for their ability to design, for one thing that a machine will never be able to replicate is the human brain and its invention and thirst for art and design. The human brain does not work with algorithms, it’s spontaneous and completely unpredictable. A computer will never understand Picasso.
Who knows? The AI computer may eventually devalue itself completely. Products and supplies that we use on a daily basis will cost nothing to produce as the machines that provide them will run themselves and in turn cost nothing to run, thus continuing the pattern.