AI As a Fundamental Expectation
While this is linking to Simon Willison’s blog, the quote below comes from a leaked letter by Tobias Lütke, the CEO of Shopify:
Using Al effectively is now a fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify. It’s a tool of all trades today, and will only grow in importance. Frankly, I don’t think it’s feasible to opt out of learning the skill of applying Al in your craft; you are welcome to try, but I want to be honest I cannot see this working out today, and definitely not tomorrow. Stagnation is almost certain, and stagnation is slow-motion failure. If you’re not climbing, you’re sliding.
This is not surprising to anyone who has been using AI for a while. Regardless of where you stand on the various questionable aspects of AI, you can’t deny that it is increasingly becoming good.
Just last week, I had 62 podcast episodes that I needed to reference. It would have been a monumental task to do everything that I needed to do with those with out the help of AI.
It’s funny that while I’m working on my doctorate, the expectation is basically “You can’t use AI for anything, and if you do, you don’t get credit for it” and in the “real world” a CEO is saying, “Look, if you don’t use it, you’re falling behind.”
And:
We will add Al usage questions to our performance and peer review questionnaire. Learning to use Al well is an unobvious skill. My sense is that a lot of people give up after writing a prompt and not getting the ideal thing back immediately. Learning to prompt and load context is important, and getting peers to provide feedback on how this is going will be valuable.
Not only do you have to start using it, but it will be noted in performance reviews! You pretty much can’t escape this.
How long until we as educators stop playing the silly whack-a-mole stoplight game and understand that this technology cannot be ignored?
via Tobias Lütke