You Can Learn AI Later

I'm not sure this is really good advice. I'm a hardware engineer and my industry is ~decades behind software engineering. Our compilers are slow, closed source, poorly documented. Every build system is some level of custom and broken. There are tonnes of people in our industry who still don't really get tools like Jenkins or git etc. And those people are going to ignore AI and they're going to be less productive because of it in the same way they're still doing bi-annual releases and churning through junior employees by tasking them with "verification".

It's very easy to look at those guys on twitter who a few years ago were claiming block chain was the future, or 5 years ago were claiming Tesla would make driving obsolete, and think "Yeah they're just bullshit artists". And a lot of them are. Weirdos writing egotistical dross about how you just don't understand how to be the ubermensch. You've got to do flounder mode or you're a nobody. I'm a naturally very skeptical person about all that - it's egotists on the internet trying either trying to be loved or genuinely trying to have a "brand" for business purposes (mainly the former).

But what you need to know about AI today is simple: that it probably is actually helpful for you today. Don't go off and learn it. Continue doing what you're doing, but maybe try out AI tools to see if they can help. For me at the very least ChatGPT is as helpful as Google for the first step in sanity checking something I want to do when coding. I think it's decent productivity boost and in my industry, you make money by being more productive than the guy at the company you're competing with so it's a simple choice.

There's no rush, you definitely can learn it later, but also - it's good today. It's not a waste of time - like learning about blockchain would be, or refusing to get a driving license in order to hold out for self-driving.

Odd: when I think of "learning AI" I think I'd be constructing an LLM that has added value over what's currently available - such as removing hallucinations within a limited scope.

The only reason to really spend time into learning AI now and buy online courses is to teach AI now and sell online courses. Which explains the Linkedin situation.