Technology

The problem with VR is the cost of a headset. It’s a high cost of entry. Few want to buy another expensive device unless it’s really worth it.

Generative AI has a small cost of entry for the consumer. Just log in to a site, maybe pay some subscription fee, and start prompting. I’ve used it to quickly generate Excel formulas for example. Instead of looking for a particular answer in some website with SEO garbage I can get an answer immediately.

Nah, this ain't it.

So here's the thing about AI, every company desperately wants their employees to be using it because it'll increase their productivity and eventually allow upper management to fire more people and pass the savings onto the C suites. Just like with computerization.

The problem is that you can't just send all of your spreadsheets on personal financial data to OpenAI/Bing because from a security perspective that's a huge black hole of data exfiltration which will make your company more vulnerable. How do we solve the problem?

In the next five to ten years you will see everyone from Microsoft/Google to smaller more niche groups begin to offer on-premise or cloud based AI models that are trained on a standardized set of information by the manufacturer/distributor, and then personally trained on company data by internal engineers or a new type of IT role completely focused on AI (just like how we have automation and cloud engineering positions today.)

The data worker of the future will have a virtual assistant that emulates everything that we thought Google assistant and Cortana was going to be, and will replace most data entry positions. Programmers will probably be fewer and further between, and the people that keep their jobs in general will be the ones who can multiply and automate their workload with the ASSISTANCE of AI.

It's not going to replace us anytime soon, but it's going to change the working environment just as much as the invention of the PC did.

I wouldn't really compare AI and VR.

We know VR is still somewhat in it's infancy but with pushes like with what Valve has been doing for it, it's progressively getting better. It is still years away from being perfected but for what we have of VR right now, it's not bad. We just need to figure out how to take it out of the goggle/headset interface because I think it can be designed better. If we integrate it with AR technology, then we might have a winning combination there.

AI is heavily critiqued because it is being used as a tool in a similar vein as automation, it is just a shortcut for businesses to use AI who they think can replace humans. The writers strike going on right now, reflects this. I wouldn't exactly call it a 'mundane' way, more like a draconian way.