New reality: Is AI a friend or a threat to digital specialists?

Introduction

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Probably only the laziest haven't tried any AI (artificial intelligence) tool yet. The last few years have been a real boom. But is everything really that good? Is AI our friend, or a threat we should fear?

What's scary?

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Technological progress is great. Every year we get new services, apps, or companies that improve our lives. But when AI appeared, the pace of technological development accelerated tenfold. The situation now is that if you don't keep up with what's happening in the market, you can fall behind in just a few months

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But there's another opinion — that such rapid development of AI technologies isn't as good as we think

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Even the creators of AI technologies are sounding the alarm. Geoffrey Hinton, known as the "godfather of AI," estimates the probability that AI could lead to catastrophic consequences for humanity at 20%. And when asked for career advice — he jokingly replied: "Train to be a plumber." Interestingly, according to Steven Bartlett, some CEOs of the largest AI companies worry about the future behind closed doors, but publicly say the opposite

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There's already research showing that excessive use of AI, specifically offloading creative work — coming up with ideas or writing texts — negatively affects the brain. If you only use AI chatbots, over time it becomes harder for your brain to come up with something new without the help of AI assistants

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Similarly, certain tools can already perform work faster and better than humans. And here the logical question arises: "Will AI and robots based on it replace us all?"

How it actually works

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I actually believe that no one will replace anyone. Of course, there are routine tasks that almost no one likes to do — and this is exactly where we get help from AI

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On the other hand, we see constant improvement of technologies. But what I see allows me to say: for now, AI is essentially like a small child who is constantly learning, but without human guidance (or in the context of the example — parents) cannot do anything independently

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This is actually very easy to verify. Try giving a task to come up with text for an Instagram post. Sounds not too difficult, but without details, without your ideas and edits, most likely the text from AI will look templated, bland, and uninteresting. But when you provide more hints, examples, your experience and ideas — you'll get a better result, and exactly the text that will highlight your individuality

My position

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Those who will be replaced by AI would most likely have been replaced by other technologies or people anyway, because they simply aren't very effective. Analyzing the market, at least in my field of web design, I see more and more studios, designers, and companies. And those who learn to use AI, those who adapt new technologies for themselves — they will win in the long run

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On the other hand, there are more optimistic forecasts. Elon Musk at the VivaTech conference in Paris stated: "In a benign scenario, probably none of us will have a job. There will be universal high income — not basic, but high. There will be no shortage of goods or services." Musk estimates the probability of such a scenario at 80% and believes that work will become something like a hobby — if you want to work, you can do it, but AI and robots will provide everything you need

What this means for us

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Even for services that help developers write code, people are still needed to verify the results. So even if we transition to AI doing most of the work, we as humans will become something like "pilots" who will guide and edit what AI does for us

Conclusion

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So my forecast is more positive about the whole AI boom in our time. However, of course, there are certain concerns that in a few years of relentless development of these technologies, we will inevitably come to chaos or apocalypse

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I myself actively use various AI tools that really help me do my work faster and better. I generate some images as needed through Leonardo AI, write texts or structure with the help of Claude. However, I always try to come with an idea or client's words already — I almost never work from scratch, because I know the result will be far from what's desired. Sometimes you can go without materials, but then it's better to view AI services as a source of inspiration or a search for ideas that you can develop further

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If we were able to create such technologies, then I think that through joint efforts we can also control them and use them for their intended purpose — to help people. Like AI analysis of diseases in hospitals, which helps detect early stages of illnesses that the human eye might not have seen

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This is exactly how I want to see the use of technology — as a partnership between humans and AI, robots, or anything else the human mind is capable of