Don't Get Laid Off by AI (From a Lead Principal Engineer)

AI Job Displacement Concerns00:00

Lots of people are worried that AI is getting insanely smart, can change everything, and can take their six-figure tech job away. They are wondering what kind of skills they can build to position themselves well in that new world.

Your worry is 100% justified. Generative AI is a major breakthrough that's going to change everything. Some people say that it's at the same level as the invention of the smartphone, but that comparison misses the point. This is not just about making a computer smaller. Generative AI needs to be looked at as the discovery of fire or electricity. It can fundamentally change how we operate as a society.

If you are still doing exactly what you have been doing in the past, you will get left behind in that past, and by the time you realize what's happening it might be too late. You absolutely need to understand what is changing and how to plan for it.

How Large Language Models Work01:01

By now you probably have heard of the term ChatGPT or large language models. The quick intro of how they actually work: first we created this giant neural network which mimics the structure and complexity of the human brain. Let's think of it as an empty brain. Then we let this brain read the entire internet over and over again until it absorbs everything, and that means everything. Every book, every comment, every cat meme, every GitHub code file, everything. All of it gets absorbed into this empty brain.

Now we can ask the brain questions or have it complete tasks for us. We do so by providing context and the desired output as a prompt to the model. That's the basic form of large language models.