Going All In on AI
This is just a quick life update/post. Kind of a statement for posterity, but also an update for anyone curious about what I’m doing these days: I’m officially “all in on AI”.
Here’s
- Why I’m going all in on AI,
- What I’m doing, and
- What I hope to get out of it.
As of a few months ago (June 2024, to be precise), I’ve basically stopped working on my blogs. I keep them updated and I’m letting them produce income to keep me afloat, but I’m not writing more content. I won’t sell them, because I can use AI to develop them more in the future.
The reason I’ve stopped working on them is that I’m spending 100% of my time doing AI projects. This means, broadly, writing applications that use AI to do more and more complex things, including automating business processes, writing code, and generally managing more mundane parts of my life. Basically, everything other than writing! For now, anyway…
I’m also not taking on consulting projects, nor am I looking for jobs.
If you want to follow along, here’s where I write about it.
Why AI?
Why AI? For a few reasons. But in a nutshell, because I’ll be damned if I sit around letting this wave pass me by.
Firstly, blogs and individual content are dying. The writing’s on the wall for my existing business anyway. The individual content creation business is either dying or rapidly transforming away from the domain of the individual writer.
My blogs have been absolutely slaughtered by the onslaught of AI-generated content online. Search engines can’t keep up. My revenue has roughly halved since a year ago, and I’m tired of fighting this losing battle.
Secondly, AI is one of the next big waves. Few of these come around in one’s lifetime, and AI is unique in that pretty much anyone can jump on this bandwagon.
Worst case, in about a year, I’ll be far, far ahead of the many consultants who think they know a bit about AI because they use ChatGPT and some plugins. If you’re not using AI to extend itself, then you’re leverage on the table (for me to take).
As I wrote in this rambling post about “Building your own light saber” as a framework for thinking about how to get ahead of AI, I think that being ahead of the AI curve is crucial for people of our generation.
Finally, developing AI tools is really fun. I’m not an engineer… well I am in theory, in that I graduated from a well-respected engineering university with a Bachelor of Engineering… with first-class honours. Fine, I am an engineer! I just mean I haven’t spent my life coding, just on and off over the last few decades. But I have always found it really fun.
The fun thing about software and coding is that the problems have solutions that are all entirely in front of you. I don’t have to go to the hardware store to buy tools and supplies. I don’t have to order complicated chips from over the internet. I can do everything — as long as my hardware can handle it, anyway.
There are a few times in my life I’ve started something and thought “This is it. I love this. I will dedicate myself to this.” I figured out I wanted to dedicate myself to language learning in my early twenties — and I’m now a hyperpolyglot. I figured out how much I loved CrossFit and, more recently, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and combat sports (see a similar post where I decided to be “all-in” on that), only a few years ago. But I have the same feeling for AI.
The Aim
What’s my endgame? Basically this: Know a ****load about AI and see where that takes me. Much more than the pretenders and “enthusiasts”. I believe in doing, not in just advising how to do things (barf emoji at consultants who just live in slide decks and reports… I used to be one, but I got out), nor in writing how to do it.
The worst-case scenario is that I’ll know enough to be able to help a lot of people do complex things: Transform their businesses using AI or to adapt to an AI world, help people use it in their daily lives, or launch apps for people to use.
People who started things on their internet in the late 1990s and early 2000s — no matter what they were — figured out how to make something of it.
The best-case scenario is to be an AI billionaire. There have to be a few in the next few years. I don’t really want to be a billionaire for myself (beyond a certain point of “f-off money”, more money is a burden), but I’d like to have the capital to use for good things to improve the world in causes important to me, like conservation and helping refugees.
So I’ll just do as much as possible, and by about mid-2025, come out with effectively a master’s degree in a technology that will dictate the landscape of the online world for the next couple of decades — if not longer.
