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Ask HN: Is my career doomed if I don’t become an AI/ML Developer?

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Re: Ask HN: Is my career doomed if I don’t become an AI/ML Developer?

#12

Post by vturner »

There's plenty of comments on saying no your career is not doomed. I'll add that using HackerNews is not a strong way of grasping industry needs. If one took their advice solely from HackerNews, one might think the only tech that matters is JavaScript and associated framework of the season. This is simply not true...check out indeed.com, many many languages are in demand. Lastly, AI might be the thing of the future but the press, even the "tech" press, has a way of bubbling up and propagating hot stuff.

Remember "nanotechnology" from a few years ago? I recall reading, in a respected source, soon we would all have nanotechnology technology infused clothing off which would just roll all foreign particles! Well...still wearing my cotton slacks today...

Re: Ask HN: Is my career doomed if I don’t become an AI/ML Developer?

#13

Post by rpeden »

I think you'll be okay.

If you want to get a look at how AI and ML are going to end up being applied to a huge number of business problems, try out the Azure Cognitive Services APIs[1]. I'm not associated with them in any way, I've just played around with the APIs and enjoyed them.

A huge number of developers today wouldn't be able to re-implement the frameworks they build applications on top of. And that doesn't stop them from being productive and well-paid. They add value be being able to to recognize real-world problems, and understand how various libraries and frameworks can be combined to solve those problems.

I think that AI/ML over the next 10 years will be like SaaS was over the previous 10 years. When frameworks like Rails became popular and gained wide acceptance, it became easy to very quickly come up with web-based solutions to a huge number of problems. And people didn't do this by being experts on how the whole tech stack worked. They did it by knowing how to solve problems with specific technologies, and then recognizing problems that the technology could solve. Lots of startups have made piles of money this way.

I'm a huge proponent of understanding as much as possible of the theory and math behind the technology to use. But being able to solve problems with the technology requires you to be out the world, recognizing problems that can be solved. For example: take a look at the kinds of output the Azure Computer Vision API can provide when provided with a given image[2]. Now think of all the businesses you've encountered during your career. Most of those businesses have problems you could solve using that API. And if you don't like MS or Azure, they're far from being the only provider of such APIs.

There is, and will continue to be, lots of opportunity (and money) available for people who can understand how to use new technology and recognize how to apply it to problems in a way that will save companies money, or help them make more money. Be one of those people.

[1]https://azure.microsoft.com/en-ca/services/cognitive-service... [2] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-ca/services/cognitive-service...

Re: Ask HN: Is my career doomed if I don’t become an AI/ML Developer?

#14

Post by gavanwoolery »

I could easily be wrong, but suspect the solve for AGI will not involve much in the way of complex math (I have been of the opinion for a long time that NNs are not the solution, see my recent Twitter thread here for elaboration: https://twitter.com/gavanw/status/929085831104512001).

Analogously, my advanced calculus is pretty weak these days, but I have found a strong understanding of basic algebra and vector math is all you need to be a good graphics programmer. There are many fields like this where you do not need to read or understand a single whitepaper in order to be functional within it.

Re: Ask HN: Is my career doomed if I don’t become an AI/ML Developer?

#15

Post by make3 »

vturner wrote: post #12

There's plenty of comments on saying no your career is not doomed. I'll add that using HackerNews is not a strong way of grasping industry needs. If one took their advice solely from HackerNews, one might think the only tech that matters is JavaScript and associated framework of the season. This is simply not true...check out indeed.com, many many languages are in demand. Lastly, AI might be the thing of the future b…

the difference is that nanotechnology never worked

Re: Ask HN: Is my career doomed if I don’t become an AI/ML Developer?

#16

Post by adventured »

There is going to be a massive infrastructure built out in the way of AI services. You're going to be able to interact with those services using numerous existing languages, including Java, C#, Python and on down the line to include PHP. There will be several tiers of complexity, what we're seeing built now is the most difficult first tier. In the coming years, more and more layers of simplicity will be built, abstracting away the complexity. AI broadly is another tool, that's all it is, we'll build a lot of ways to use that tool.

Re: Ask HN: Is my career doomed if I don’t become an AI/ML Developer?

#17

Post by ChuckMcM »

If your toolkit is centered around 'web' programming then I think you should consider widening your reach. If there is a phyla of developers it could arguably defined as;

   * embedded
   * web
   * control systems
   * data analysis
   * finance
   * networking
   * systems
The more bases you cover the more likely you will find a job developing code during a transition. Note that for senior engineers it isn't about the programming language it is about the domain knowledge around the programs.

Re: Ask HN: Is my career doomed if I don’t become an AI/ML Developer?

#19

Post by adamsea »

nopacience wrote: post #10
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #6

No. 1997: Is my career doomed if I don't become a web developer? No. 2007: Is my career doomed if I don't become a mobile developer? No. 2017: Is my career doomed if I don't become an AI/ML developer? No. 2027: Is my career doomed if I don't become a/an [...]? No.

Are my finances doomed if i didnt buy bitcoin at USD100 some years ago ?

If you didn't buy bitcoin in back in 1978, then yes, you're doomed.

Re: Ask HN: Is my career doomed if I don’t become an AI/ML Developer?

#20

Post by minimaxir »

Although having AI/ML expertise is obviously overkill for most engineers, understanding the concepts and limitations of AI/ML is a helpful skill for any engineering field. (specifically it is not a magic spell that can solve any problem no matter what)

But don’t say “I took Andrew Ng’s Coursera class and now I’m an expert on AI/ML!” like many engineers tend to do nowadays.

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