The 2010s were quite the rollercoaster for anyone in new media. Constant layoffs were punctuated by the chorus of “learn to code!” from those seemingly eager to see an industry crumble. In what might be seen as either a strategic pivot or a surrender, I heeded that advice. I dove into coding, seeking the stability of a “web development” career. But irony, it seems, has a long reach. Now, barely into this new path, the whispers are back, louder this time: AI is coming for coding jobs too. Articles are circulating, questioning if software programming is becoming a waste of time in the face of advanced AI. It feels like my career change might just be perfectly timed to coincide with the rise of AI chatbots that can also… code, and often, arguably, do it better than I can.
Code, with its cryptic symbols and seemingly nonsensical syntax, can appear intimidating. To the untrained eye, it’s a foreign language. However, the evangelists of AI proclaim that this barrier is crumbling. Why grapple with the intricacies of coding just to display white text on a black background when you can simply ask an AI chatbot in plain English to do it? The chatbot promptly delivers the code, complete with instructions, ready to go.
Experimenting with these chatbots reveals their capabilities, but also their limitations. They aren’t infallible; mistakes still occur. A solid understanding of code is invaluable for spotting and correcting these errors. Yet, even debugging can become a conversation with the AI. Describe the issue, and it attempts to troubleshoot and offer solutions. It’s not a huge leap to imagine a near future where AI anticipates user needs, guides them through complex solutions, and seemingly relegates the human developer to the annals of history.
It’s easy to get swept up in the wave of fatalism surrounding AI and job displacement. The loudest voices in the tech world, often those profiting from AI development, are eager to promote this narrative. They encourage us to accept a robotic dawn where acquiring skills, performing tasks, or possessing deep knowledge becomes obsolete. But this viewpoint fundamentally confuses the ability to automate how something is done with understanding why it’s done, and the deeper implications.
AI chatbots haven’t unlocked some secret code. They’ve ingested and processed the vast ocean of resources and open-source materials readily available online for anyone to learn from. A user might attempt to bypass the learning process by leveraging a chatbot’s synthesized knowledge. However, in doing so, they forfeit the crucial understanding of the machine’s decision-making process, the quality of those decisions, and, most importantly, the broader spectrum of possibilities that lie beyond the AI’s immediate output.
‘Even when using sophisticated chatbots, you might still find the AI making errors.’ Photograph: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
One of the most rewarding aspects of web design and development is the inherent need for lateral thinking. Rarely is there a single, objectively “correct” approach to achieve a goal. A developer must consider the myriad contexts a user might encounter on a website, how they should interact with it, the desired emotional response, and even practical concerns like whether the code will cause a user’s phone to overheat. An AI, trained to find patterns and condense the web into predictable forms, doesn’t inherently think in this nuanced, user-centric way. Neither does a user who solely relies on such a machine.
Personally, I’ve found fulfillment in projects where I’m valued not just for my coding skills, distinct from a client’s lack thereof, or even for my creative ideas in isolation, but for the synergy between the two. Learning to code has been professionally rewarding, and, surprisingly, enjoyable. There’s a unique thrill when a seemingly outlandish idea comes to life through code. I genuinely believe in the browser’s potential as a profoundly creative and innovative medium. These are the kinds of projects I’m driven to create, regardless of immediate financial compensation.
While AI may reshape certain aspects of my earning potential, I refuse to believe that my craft is reducible to simply typing commands into a chatbox. No programmer should.
Yet, a powerful narrative, pushed by Silicon Valley, attempts to convince us that the human mind is predictable, replicable, and ultimately, unsophisticated. They suggest that the arts and related creative fields are nothing more than equations and keywords, conveniently aligning with their billions invested in machines capable of generating imitations of creative work, like mildly amusing images of Harry Potter in Balenciaga.
When asked about the potential applications of AI, Greg Brockman, co-founder of OpenAI (creator of ChatGPT), offered a telling prediction about the future of entertainment. “People are still upset about the last season of Game of Thrones, but imagine if you could ask your AI to make a new ending that goes a different way, and maybe even put yourself in there as a main character.”
The capacity to reimagine stories and endings has existed within human minds since the dawn of time. It reveals a stark lack of imagination from AI proponents that they present the concept of having an imagination as a groundbreaking innovation. They seem incapable of grasping the inherent joy and satisfaction derived from creating art, or why someone would prefer to craft their own narratives instead of outsourcing the entire process to a machine. They lack the fundamental conviction in their own ideas to even conceive of Game of Thrones fan fiction without AI assistance.
The most fervent enthusiasm for AI stems from those who view it as a potent cost-cutting tool, potentially liberating capital from its age-old constraint: labor costs. It’s absurd to suggest that humanity’s collective cultural output is finite, concluded, and now merely data for training AI models which will supposedly take over from here.
Feeding every piece of art ever created into a machine that reduces them to an averaged approximation is not artistic expression. It might be a clever parlor trick, an interesting novelty, but an AI can only produce somewhat convincing imitations of our creations precisely because real humans possessed the original thought, skill, and drive to create them in the first place.
The specter of AI will undoubtedly be wielded as a threat to devalue creative professions, especially by those who believe creative pursuits are only worthwhile if they are monetizable. They are wrong. A machine lacks the capacity for genuine self-expression, the fundamental human drive to communicate: “This is who I was, this is how I felt, and this is what I stood for.” We possess this drive, and in all our endeavors, we must resist attempts to make us forget the intrinsic value of our humanity.
- Tristan Cross is a Welsh writer based in London
