There so much going on with tech these days. New terminologies to learn about especially in the field of AI. Anyone else feel like we’re about to be dinosaurs in the next few years? or it just me? Do we just be like meh that’s for the next generation and carry on or should we bother with at least try to keep up?
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I think this is my “old man yells at cloud” moment. I thought it would be tiktok but I’m okay with some short form reels content. AI just doesn’t do it for me and that’s okay.
I’ll start to learn about AI when it starts to affect me
There’s an old saying:
Any technology that comes out when you’re in your 20s or earlier is the next big thing that’s going to revolutionize everything and you’re super hyped about it. Any new tech that comes out in your 30s or later is just newfangled crap to make your life more complicated.
I enjoy learning about new technology and if I come across something that I don’t know I look it up. Never too old to look things up and figure out what is new out there. Doesn’t mean you have to become an expert on the subject, but also doesn’t mean you have to be deaf, dumb and blind to new things either… Specially since you probably have a phone with access to said information at your fingertips.
Learning AI is simple.
Ask AI to write you a Simple bit of code you know.
Watch it generate the code, watch it fuck-up the code
Try to run it and watch it fail.
Now, spend an hour trying to get it to write usable code.
Give up… write code from scratch.
Me right now.
Learning is itself a skill that needs to be invested in.
But in this modern world it’s very helpful to avoid anything that auto plays or algorithms that feed you. Make sure whatever you are watching or reading is something you searched for or at least thought about before you chose.
AI isn’t helpful in my workfield, or in my hobbies, or my personal life. So I don’t care. If not, I would incorporate it.
I think every human job will be replaceable by ai within 20 years. We won’t be needed to do anything. I have no idea how society is gonna change
I can retire in 27 months…..
Just sign up for a few tech newsletter and try out some of the latest things. Should not take you more then an hour or two a week.
I skype with my 87 year old Grandfather weekly about the newest technology.
Honestly, just follow some AI subs to pick stuff up and keep semi up to date on new developments
AI isnt some scary thing, its really simple to learn and use, technology will only continue to accelerate faster
Whether you choose to adopt it or not, AI is already being implemented into our daily lives, since you wont have a choice but be affected by it, why choose to be ignorant?
I don’t need or want to learn/use AI. Even before AI, I thought it was a bit ridiculous that they were sticking WiFi and smart features into everything like refrigerators and dishwashers. And I think people were going overboard trying to make everything in their house smart so they can control everything with Alexa or Google. There’s nothing wrong with manually flipping a switch lMO. People are going to get way too dependent on AI and then freak out when something doesn’t work and won’t be able to function without it. I already have coworkers that as ChatGPT everything and blindly trust it. It’s like they’re already forgetting how to use Google or are too lazy to spend 30 seconds searching something.
I play around with ChatGPT and will use it to help organize my thoughts. I have used it to help me write descriptions for products on my website. It’s pretty accessible.
I work in AI.
Unless you’re in that world there’s no real value in staying up to date with it all, as it’s moving very fast all the time and it won’t necessarily impact you in a way you’ll immediately notice.
If you’re semi-interested I would stay up to date with what NVIDIA are up to, the entire AI industry is propped up on their GPUs so whatever trend NVIDIA are putting their money into, that’s what’s next for AI.
Roadmap for AI looks a little like this; Generative (we can make cool pictures), Agentic (this is where we are now – Apps that make decisions for us), Physical (Humanoid Robots running inference)
The last one sounds very futuristic but it’s where the market is going.
I just ask ChatGPT what is new in ai tech about once two months. Keeps me on track for what might come my way.
Learn how to give it great prompts and you can get some pretty good results out of it. If you prompt it poorly it’s gonna suck. Also it’s capable of a bunch of stuff you wouldn’t have thought of so just play around with it for a while.
Having just turned 55 I am old enough to have grown up with computers and evolving technology it’s just another tool to use.
Step back from the specific question of AI for a second and examine the idea of “keeping up as you get older” more broadly.
A ton comes down to your attitude.
I’ve known elderly people who had no less facility than I did with tech. They took an interest rather than treating it as a chore, and never internalized the line that it seems like so many do, “I should be done learning by now.” They stayed curious, and challenged the impulse in themselves to get set in their ways. They were excited to keep learning new things.
Not for nothing, those people tend to stay cognitively sharp and healthy much longer than people who treat learning as the job of the young.
Are you gonna keep up with everything? Nah, of course not. No one can, there’s too much. Even the kids growing up right now have to prioritize where they put their focus. But smart people don’t quit being smart just because they turned 30. If you adopt the attitude that you will be a student until the day you die, and that is a good thing, you’ll do fine.
38m here. 16 year career as a software engineer.
Tbh, learning AI isn’t all that hard? Just start using it. See what works. See what doesn’t. It’s neat, for sure. But it’s not replacing engineers (at least in its current form)
Just play around with it and practise.
It has helped me speed up the process and work.
Unless you’re a researcher at the forefront of it, there’s not a lot to “learn” about AI. Really all you have to do is be comfortable messing around with it. And I say this as a software engineer — for 99.9% of us, AI is a black box and you don’t have to know what’s going on beneath the hood.
It’s more a matter of changing your habits than learning anything new. Asking a chatbot to do your work for you isn’t difficult.
Use it.
People in here acting like 30 is 80 🤣
A lot of dudes here ushered in the digital age. AI is nothing compared to some of the shit we had to learn in the 90s or 2000s.
Technology is so much easier now to understand and comprehend. Plus we have millions of videos and other resources to help us learn it instead of a dumb AI FOR DUMMIES book or whatever.
Doesn’t matter what age you are, you are never “keeping up with it all”. Find an aspect of AI that interests you and run it down.
AI has already been implemented in our everyday lives without our consent. Pictures you take with your phone are AI enhanced. Your Netflix and Amazon recommendations are generated by AI.
Calling stuff like ChatGPT AI is misleading. It’s a large language model or LLM. It’s already cannibalizing itself.
So much of what I work on requires deciphering badly photographed 100+ year old plans and drawings. Those could be enhanced to be more legible, but we would still need humans on the ground checking for accuracy. The last thing we need is an accidental open sewer main because the AI determined it was 20 feet south.
Ai is no where near good to replace developers , at the moment it’s just smoke and mirrors by the companies to justify their investments
I mean it depends how much technology interests you. I tend to keep up with most but not all new technology. I don’t use AI because I do not believe it is a good thing for the world overall, but I still keep up with advancements through the news.
You are never going to keep up with everything that is new and cool, because as adults we have less free time to care about that shit unless it directly impacts us.
Hey OP. 49 year old IT project manager here. I was ambivalent about AI when it first emerged – then someone said something that really focussed my mind:
> “AI won’t take your job – but a person who know how to use AI probably will”
Since then I’ve just used it as regularly as I can it just makes more and more sense. It’s really freed me up to manage interpersonal relationships instead of spending hours a day writing up meeting notes and actions – just yesterday, I received one of those infuriating emails saying “looping in u/yearsofpractice for visibility” when about 30 messages were already in the chain. I was able to use AI to summarise the content and actions in 10 seconds. Amazing stuff.
It’s brilliant in my line of work because it helps me assess options – it also allows me to quickly understand technical concepts outside of my areas of expertise and – most importantly – how those concepts can be applied and the benefits.
All in all – AI’s been a bit of a revelation for me.
Always remember – never put anything to do with work through AI unless you’ve got explicit permission to do so from your technical security people!
I just hope we can give it sentience before the human race uses it to further destroy itself so it can guide us into salvation
We’re not that old!
Obviously, its impact will vary based on your line of work, but you should keep an eye on what it’s doing to the world around “you”.
I rarely use A.I. daily, but it has helped me with some research projects and hobbies on occasion.
But will be adopting AI in my business this year to automate much of the admin work I do with my business: https://taxdome.com/taxdome-ai
For me, it’s not even about creating a competitive advantage, but about getting a better work-life lifestyle by automating a ton of tedious, repetitive tasks.
honestly from what I’m hearing from Warren buffet bill gates and Michio Kaku, none of us will keep up and nobody will understand how it works, because it’s self designing programming and self teaching
As an “Xennial” working in tech for his entire life, I am extraordinarily worried. I watched the birth and death of the Internet in my lifetime. This is really all I know how to do. The algorithms have made “knowing” obsolete. The free exchange of information that was supposed to lead us to a grand enlightenment has been subverted into an abstraction of statistics bent on maximizing societal control into the hands of a few, never before witnessed in human history.
As existentially terrifying as this realization is, it does not compare to the immense fear that I have for the ability to keep my family alive.
I helped create it. Lord have mercy on me.
Ironically, I use AI to teach me how to ethically utilize AI. 😂
You just gotta engage in it – whatever it is.
As soon as ChatGPT had its first explosion last year or whatever, I started using it. For my own fun but mostly for work. Its been a revelation.
I’m 35, but I know tons of men in their 60s and 70s who just are the same. They pursue learning all the time.
Sign up for a (free) chatgpt account and experiment with it in your daily life.
Stupid questions you have that you COULD answer with a google search but want to try asking someone who already scanned all of google for multiple years.
Build rapport (memory) with it. Let it learn about you a little bit. then start asking it for help with DECISIONS. See how it reasons. See if you can tweak it into making decisions the way you want it to.
If you’re into tech it’s not work, if you’re not into tech you aren’t really missing anything.
No, I feel like younger people are actually computer illiterate. Gen Z by and large can’t find the fucking C drive or actually phrase a search in order to get the results they’re looking for.
We can’t. There’s going to have to be a strike and resistance.
How did you learn about new advancements before?
Adapt or sink into obscurity. It’s a choice.