Over the last year+ I've seen AI quickly increase its dominance in the social feeds I follow.
I know I'm in an echo chamber, but it feels like working on the web, you/we must understand how AI works and have some kind of integration in our products.
It feels like it's being bulldozed by private companies clambering over each other to gain control of user intimacy, whilst we live in a world that still hasn't properly integrated or understood the social and mental effects of social media (TL;DR: it bad).
This is compounded by the figures of costing vs. actual profit (cost being disproportionately higher than profit - needs reference though!) and the physical energy required to produce working AI models. It almost feels irresponsible to use this tech. The so-called net positive effect just isn't justified...is it?
AI can certainly be used for good, but do we already live in a world where if you're a software developer, particularly on the web, you have to be fully on board the AI train to be of actual value?
I'm really not sure, just sounding out. Maybe I see too many stupid use cases (like the Tour De France generated videos, or garbage code suggestion from paid tools like copilot) skewing my view.
I'd love to hear a balanced discussion on this topic, from the tooling, financial, energy/climate impact: "is AI a prerequisite to develop for the web?" at ffconf. I'd love it if you might "tag" anyone (ideally UK or Europe based) that you think would be a good fit.
(I originally posted this on LinkedIn, but wanted to capture it "forever" on my blog).