I’ve started writing this post several times, trying to work out what I wanted to say without descending into an anti-AI “all LLM-pushing techbros are shitehawks” rant because Ed Zitron does a much better job of that. Then today something happened that crystalised it in my mind.

For as long as I’ve worked in IT there has always been someone telling me that unless I embrace thing I will, sure as the grass is green, be “left behind”. Because we work in an environment where nothing is as sure as change, this sort of rings true. The problem is that it’s usually total arsegravy.

The current thing is, of course, AI in the form of LLMs and their idiot agents roaming through the world with the misplaced confidence of the very worst private school educated morons.

Today someone building a VM and rather than read the very clear deployment documentation instead shoved it up an LLM which answered questions based on the document with clarity and confidence but very little accuracy.

This was a simple task and could have been completed in well under an hour if the short deployment guide had been read and followed. Instead the incorrect instructions from the LLM were followed, the deployment failed and a whole day was wasted.

So to the title of this blog. This is going to make me sound like every boring adult ever speaking to a kid but I’m old and dull enough to embrace it… Go and learn stuff.

We get good at what we do through experience, training, experimentation, curiosity and tenacity… It’s these, and many more, qualities that mark out a good technologist.

Can the thing be useful and worth learning, embracing and deploying? Maybe, it depends on the context. There’s so much wrong with the current generative AI sector that it’s too toxic for me to consider going near it – your opinion may be different and you may have found ways to bring it into your workflow that automates tasks without outsourcing your own mind, which may work well for you.

But just as a major red flag of a scam is a sense of urgency, anyone suggesting you MUST do the thing NOW or you’ll be forever a worthless husk, fit only for stacking shelves, if that job hadn’t also been replaced by a robot that’s better than you… I would approach that with caution.

New technology can be daunting, threatening and exciting. We should always be looking at how thing can add to the mix, but ask yourself: are you chasing it out of a fear that you’ll be “left behind”? If so, who is telling you this and what do they have to gain?