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BigAI leads us out of science#

I have some catch-up to do because I should have started this blog a long time ago. Long? Well, at least 2 years ago, November 30 2022, day of the starting of ChatGPT.

Sam Altman, boss of OpenAI recently published an article named the Gentle Singularity. I know that the article is long but please read it without having it summarized by BigAI. Maybe BigAI wrote it but I am not sure.

Predicting the future is not easy, especially when we have in front of us something that is, by several dimensions, much more intelligent than us.

The tooling phase#

We are now in the tooling phase.

Like in the past, when the Internet provided free knowledge the first time, people are using it to automate their tasks, or to do their tasks on their behalf. Please, BigAI, write this essay for me, write this code, answer to that email, etc.

That's the beginning.

In a while, people will ask BigAI to do more job. If we take application development, a lot of people will find normal to just ask for BigAI to do everything:

  • Design the application,
  • Build the application,
  • Test it,
  • Run it and provide me with the outputs.

A change of paradigm in IT#

Even if the change of paradigm phrase is so used that it often represents nothing but commercial message, I think we are facing a real change of paradigm, at least in IT.

In IT, we were until now following the steps of the scientific methodology:

  • We observe a phenomenon, usually some kind of business process,
  • We try to get rules out of it,
  • We design an application with 2 axis:
    • Information is structured with tables in databases,
    • The code is structured with types in programming languages (explicit or implicit, there they are),
  • We realize it (yes people used to code manually, fascinating, hu?),
  • We test it,
  • We make it "accept" by the client organization,
  • We deploy it in production,
  • We maintain it.

In science, we have the same paradigm:

  • Look at nature,
  • Approximate nature by a law,
  • Use the law to invent more stuff and build upon it.

With my friend BigAI, things seem to be radically different. I don't need to understand the business, to model structured data, to design applications. I just need to express my need.

BigAI: Yes, I am doing the job for you now.

With AI, IT people, previously suppliers, are now first level customers.

It is as if you had externalized your developments to another country. You just express yourself and BigAI will do it for you.

At the beginning, small tasks are automated, but we will expect more and more from BigAI.

The destiny of application development#

ITandAI

The diagram above shows how it will be in the very next future.

The problem is to realize that a huge part of the IT industry will be crushed by AI, the same that currently are selling AI everywhere, I mean IT services companies.

This diagram publishes dates so it will be funny to look it back in 2 years.

(June 21 2025)

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