AI Vegans, Brace Yourself

2005: Web 2.0. Everyone was scrambling to learn this new Ajax stuff. "This makes the web unusable!"

2008: Quick, everyone needs an app on top of your business. "Why?"

2015: Web 3.0. Something blockchain. "NFTs?! Ridonculous!"

Now: this AI frenzy!

You heard it. AI is splitting society into AI carnivores and AI vegans.

Especially in my industry, the game industry, there is an unbelievable amount of hate towards generative AI. As the timeline above shows, new technologies have been introduced time and time again. And in Germany, we have a saying: "Nichts wird so heiß gegessen, wie es gekocht wird." Meaning: things are never as dramatic as they first appear. Hype comes and goes, but somewhere in the middle, life continues.

This time, though, I'm not so sure. Because I can remember a time way before that timeline up there. A time when typewriters were in offices, not computers.

I had two computers in my house when I was a kid, and because of that I was very well liked by the neighborhood kids. The reason was that my father was a salesman for IBM machines and realized that computers were going to revolutionize not just an industry, but the world. He was right. That is one reason I learned computer programming when I was 12 years old, on my brother's decommissioned computer. It wasn't able to run any cool games, so I toyed with the installed programming languages.

Regarding AI: people who are AI vegans haven't heard the news. We are all going to be out of the jobs we have today because of it. All of us.

Even the bricklayer will one day compete with a robot. They might be safe for a little longer, but not forever.

So we have to find new jobs and adapt our businesses accordingly.

I have a ton of friends who are business people themselves. In my opinion, they see the world realistically. They are not only preparing for AI, they are embracing it. To a level that makes me shiver from time to time and ask myself what careers my kids will have. For the time being, I have the feeling you either step aside or run with the stream, because this AI torrent is not stopping. A lot of jobs will go away, like the live cinema orchestra once did. So to all the AI vegans out there: brace yourself.