Speaking of, I might have been more enthusiastic if I was a young man. In my 30s, I can hardly give a shit about spending my remaining years, before dedicating myself to a family, sitting in front of a screen trying to be relevant and learn some hackneyed Python scripts that implement already-outdated AI models. Fuck that shit. That's a young man's game. I already did that with JavaScript development, which now looks incredibly stable in contrast to AI.
Most products integrating AI will be obsolete soon anyway. The idea that AI works better as an adjunct to existing applications seems reasonable in the short term, but LLMs will get more advanced to the point where doing things in a traditional way won't make sense. The people in charge of businesses right now are simply too set in their ways and are unwilling to actually understand this technology. They believe they will see riches by being a GPT-whisperer, and maybe they will in the short term.
In IT the competition is high and the job security is low. So I either close my company and go work for a big dog and earn less than i would driving trucks, keep operating as a one man pty ltd and push to expand or bugger it all off and go building/laboring.
Tbh bailing from IT as an industry is becoming more appealing. The industry sucks.
Vendor lock in has gotten so bad folks don't implement good infrastructure rollout because of it.
Also my email is fuck_you@gmail.com if any journalists want to interview me, assuming journalists still exist in current year
I do think that, regardless of your job, AI assistance can be useful and worth getting used to, that's the biggest takeaway from the past 12 months.