If you seen or read the news in this last few years, A.I. has caused us all to be a bit shaken. It's a paradigm shift that we haven't seen since the rise of the internet; many folks working in the industry now have never experienced something like this – a true change in the way we all work.
If you're in your 40's (and older), you should be familiar with the phrase “Times they are a-changing”.
"Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin'
And you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'"
- Bob Dylan,
Bob Dylan, performing "Times They Are A-Changing"
If you seen or read the news in this last few years, A.I. has caused us all to be a bit shaken. It's a paradigm shift that we haven't seen since the rise of the internet; many folks working in the web design and development industry now have never experienced something like this – a true change in the way we all work.
It started way back in the 1960's, but in the 80's and 90's it started to crush small town America. NAFTA went into effect in 1994, and we saw many factories relocating overseas shortly after. With that came a great upheaval in small towns across America.
One thing thing that hadn't been replaced, for at least a decade, was the path to earning a living without going to college. Before, you could go down the the local factory and get a job; you'd get on-the-job training, benefits, and make a livable wage. When the factories left, it left a giant hole in the entire ecosystem.
With that giant hole, crime, drugs, and depression festered. Those that could leave left, and those that couldn't were destined to difficult existence in modern America.
If you aren't following Peter Santenello on YouTube, you should. He travels the country (and the world), talks to people and gives a good snapshot of what is going on around us.
Fast forward to the rise of the Internet in the late 90's and 2000's.
The Internet allowed many of those people that weren't exactly cut-out for college a way to make a living again – just as the factories had allowed them to do decades before. You could create a store, learn virtually anything, and make yourself a life.
People started buying things again. The economy started to rebound, and while some of these small towns – these factory towns – will never recover, many of them embraced the internet and started to revitalize themselves.
Fast-forward to present day.
While most things are going backward in American society right now, A.I. is continuing ahead at a breakneck speed. It's so fast that many people don't see or won't see what is coming. Those internet jobs we all have to replace those factory jobs are all being automated. A.I. is replacing Visual Designers and U.X. Designers. I know, they don't say that – they are "empowering them to work faster and easier", they claim – but let's be real. The endgame is clear.
Writing, at least functional writing and reporting, is being replaced by A.I. already. Proofreading, grammar, translation... Apps already do all of those things. But Design... Design is taking information and making it visually digestible. It's inspiring someone to formulate thoughts and emotion (not unlike reading a great novel like the ones written by my friend Matthew Warner) and connecting them to buy-in on a concept subconsciously.
We are now empowering A.I. to replace those creative people. Intended or not. I'll dive into that later in a separate post.
Without going into detail about the whole ecosystem and food chain that it seems that many folks don't fully grasp (or care to notice or understand), Designers are like those small plankton that all the small fish eat. And once there is no food for the small fish, there isn't any food for the larger fish. And once there isn't food for the larger fish, there isn't food for animals that rely on the fish as a food source.
And so on. You get the gist of it.
When the designers go, so does the bulk of "developers" (or Engineers as they refer to themselves as). If there isn't anything to build, there isn't a need for them. Already, A.I. like Claude or ChatGPT can code better than most junior or mid-level developers. Senior Developers (or Architect-level) may be able to squeak by, knowing ins-and-outs of proprietary systems, but your general Front-End Developers, basic "developer" roles will disappear.
And there is the big problem.
With all of these jobs gone in this one segment of society alone, it will be another monumental shift similar to, but larger in scale and more impactful than the factories leaving town. Those factory jobs don't exist any longer (we gave them away already), and coupled with the fact that jobs in other industries are being replaced by A.I., there will be a scarcity of jobs that things A.I. can't replace yet.
I'm not sugar-coating it; it's scary. Don't jump off a bridge just yet. Just as the Internet saved us in the U.S.A. from the greed that destroyed our jobs, there will be something else. It's not entirely clear on what that'll be yet, but there will be something else. Humanity is resilient.
Be prepared. Times they are a-changing.
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