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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?

#41

Post by ilaksh »

It's not practical to do complex math every time there is a new application of AI. So the amount of math necessary will be limited. Devs will probably shortly need to be able to use AI libraries and/or cloud systems. This may be complex and use a little math sometimes but doesn't require a math degree. Less math becomes necessary over time as off the shelf becomes more powerful.

The next part is controversial but I personally believe the first unimpressive but totally general AI systems will appear in 2019. They will be animal-like intelligences, with real or simulated embodiment, inputs and outputs that can serve any purpose, online learners that can reuse the same nets across tasks.

As AGI becomes more powerful in the early to mid 2020s it will become apparent that most of the existing jobs will either be replaced or have to change to something the AIs can't or aren't allowed to do. AIs will be able to code.

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

#42

Post by ubersoldat2k7 »

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.

Exactly, the same thing happened with mobile a few years ago and it just didn't click with me. There was a bubble of mobile developers, apps and firms. I can recall at least 4 such firms that placed all their bets on mobile projects, and they're not around any more. And mobile has/had a much much greater market shaping influence than AI/ML will.

Actually, be wary with this sort of "specialization" because if the market shrinks or stops growing, you'll end up isolated from the work force.

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

#43

Post by j-c-h-e-n-g »

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.

Is my career doomed if I don't become a sysadmin?

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

#44

Post by owebmaster »

myth_drannon wrote: post #39
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…

Right, like reading HN you would think Django/Rails is what people are using for web frameworks. But actually Spring is more popular if you check StackOverflow careers for example. HN is an echo chamber of ML or JS hypes

But if you look at the trends on entreprise in the past 2-3 years, it is also moving to JS. So if HN is an echo chamber of future trends, it is good advantage for a developer to become top notch, isn't it? This is how I see HN (in the technical part).

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

#45

Post by triplee »

drelihan wrote: post #18

no, if you can just write scripts to clean up the data used in the ML/AI models, you'll likely spin gold for the next decade or so.

This. I'm transitioning from being a full stack web dev (because that's basically impossible now) to being a data integration developer.

Old school ETL grew up along with the ML folks to be sophisticated, and essentially another tech. stack that looks like back end programming. Figuring out how to move data around reliably and quickly and clean it up in process is an unsexy job that's in really high demand. Using code (often JS) to pull out data and do mockups for the BI people before they plug in their fancy dataviz tools and do the pretty stuff is a lot like front end programming, and also not sexy, but in high demand.

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

#46

Post by apsophus »

You'll be fine.

Yes, it's true that if you happen to have expertise in ML or a related field then your career prospects right now are looking good. But not having ML absolutely doesn't mean that your career prospects are bad. To use medicine as a parallel: sure, it might be sexy and lucrative to be a Brain Surgeon (or whatever), but 1) only a tiny percentage of doctors can be brain surgeons, and 2) being a doctor is a solid and well-paid career no matter what you specialize in.

As for the people who say ML is going to make most software developers obsolete because machines are going to learn to write code - don't believe the hype. A large chunk of the work programmers do is translating vague specifications from other humans into precise technical concepts (and only then into code). The only kind of machine thay could really do that kind of work well would be a general AI, and that is 1) not even on the horizon in terms of our current technical knowledge, and 2) basically a social and cultural singularity for humanity as a whole, so that worrying about your own career prospects I those circumstances would honestly be kind of silly.

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

#47

Post by dnautics »

tw1010 wrote: post #25

I would bet a small fortune that the ML hype will not live up to expectation on a 7 year horizon. It is true that there are cool things coming out of the field, and it is true that there are a lot of smart people are entering the field. But the demand for researchers, using actual mathematics day-to-day, is going to be incredibly slim compared to what you'd think it'll be if you read the news about this stuff. Data s…

I have a lot of sympathy for this view, but I think you should be a bit more specific about whose "expectation". ML has exceeded my "expectations" for the 5 year horizon now, and I'm expecting saturation of the class of current-ML-solvable problems soon; but that (barring some sort of paradigm shift that I can't see at the moment) the siloed nature of ML training will mean that actual applications will still create a strong demand for deployment solutions for about 5-7 years to go.

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

#49

Post by tpkj »

ryandrake wrote: post #26
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.

Best answer so far. Technology fads come and go. Anyone in the business for any length of time has seen so many of them. If you just get your news from the HN bubble, you're likely to believe AI/ML is all anyone does anymore, but I'd speculate that it's needed in less than 1% of all programming projects out there now and in the near future. If you're a programmer, focus on the fundamentals: Learn to write new code an…

Seems like "HN bubble" is a large part of this person's challenge. Like you say, "Technology fads come and go", and there's no place quite like HN to have your sanity picked apart by fad-feeding frenzies and when, all is said and done, the often time-wasting arguments and ultimately irrelevant material that flies around on HN.

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

#50

Post by kendallpark »

At my university the "intro to AI" undergrad course has exploded into this 500 student monstrosity (and they're struggling to find a prof to teach a second section). The department has rules in place to make sure that CS students get first dibs on taking the course because of how many non-CS majors want in on the AI goldrush.

Much of this is overhype. ML is no replacement for good software development. Your career won't be dead. ML will undoubtedly be integrated into toolsets that don't involve any math whatsoever.

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