We are now in the age of the Inventor Economy. If you want to create value, you must be able to do things that have never been done before. Any existing human creation can be learned and reproduced by advanced Generative-AI algorithms.
This currently applies to all kinds of media: text, images, videos, audio and music. Using 3D-Printing, a Gen-AI model can even create sculptures.
The only valuable text is a text that has never been written before. If you are a book author, you need to be super creative and innovative. Without your imagination, you also don’t have a unique value proposition.
The same is true about software developers. The only valuable code is code that has never been written before. And to write code that has never been written, you must solve problems that have never been solved.
All other systems can be implemented by a Gen-AI model if it has the right input: a detailed requirements document that is complete and non-ambiguous. But if such a requirements document does not exist, don’t worry: the Gen-AI model will be able to interview the users to collect the required information. Besides a programmer, it will also be the Product Owner.
So if you are a software developer, and if you understand that your only hope to survive is solving problems that have never been solved and writing code that has never been written, you should ask some questions:
1) What are the organizations that are solving problems that have never been solved?
2) What are the skills required to write code that has never been written?
My answer to the first question is: Startups and Research Labs of big companies. This is exactly where I spent the last 30 years of my life, since I finished my Masters degree in Computer Sciences at the Technion in 1995.
My answer to the second question is: You must become an inventor. You must be a scientist and learn how to run experiments. You must be able to think about an hypothesis and then validate if it is true or false.
If you are a software developer you have a big challenge ahead. But it will not be sufficient to think out-of-the-box. Your box does not exist anymore. You must create your own box now. And you must be able to create a box that people are willing to pay for. Good luck.
The parallels between Art and Science
I think that in general the emergence of new technologies enable us to solve new problems.
We should be inspired by the Renaissance. People like Leonardo DaVinci were so influential because they were multi-disciplinary and they created completely new ideas combining both art and science.
We can solve new problems using existing tools in the same way that Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali created completely new painting styles.
I expect that many software developers will create new solutions that could be patented, while others will run experiments with results that could be published in a scientific journal or conference.
Perhaps this is just a new mindset more than a new set of skills. This has always happened in Research Labs, but not enough in other software development organizations.
The new technologies enable automation but from the other side they also enable new kinds of experiments. And the results of these new experiments will be used to develop completely new solutions.
We should try to work on projects that are creating new technologies. I have done this myself in the Research Labs of companies like IBM and Yahoo. I also had the privilege to work for several innovative startups.
For example, see here an article from my blog about some projects in which we have developed new technologies in startup companies: The Myth of Innovation and the First-Mover Advantage
What do you think about that? Please feel free to share your opinion in the comments below.
