As in many areas of life, I’m often ‘in the middle’. I’d rather be a diplomat than a firebrand voice forcing my ideas on other people. I’d rather plant seeds open handedly than force a result from every ounce of crop. And so it isn’t terribly surprising that I find myself somewhat in the middle of the AI argument.
Some are saying that AI is going to kill us all. My own worldview about who is in charge makes that one hard for me to believe. But even if it is the tool that ushers in the end, all will be ok. That said, economies could be made and unmade by this technology. And so I do believe we need to embrace what it has to offer and appreciate its limitations. In fact, somewhere in that equation, I think we can find important and meaningful work for many who choose this path.
To reinforce this concept, I’ll point you to a real life example I once lived. Back in 2013, I had moved from Indianapolis, Intellistack’s headquarters at the time, back to Oklahoma City. Although we had a thriving office with ~20 people, that move was a part of a series of changes that opened the door to remote work. Relatedly, we had allowed two team members to move from Indy to Chicago and San Francisco respectively. And we’d really put the wheels in motion when we hired our first team member in Poland.
The challenge we faced was two-fold. The first was that the out-of-office team felt very disconnected from the office. The second was that the office team had no reason to be motivated to try and ‘connect’ the outsiders since they had a fun and well regarded office environment.
To make the move and get more people engaged in our new distributed world, we reframed our efforts as being ‘remote-first’ and that we wanted to create a remote environment that closely resembled (well as close as you could get) an in-office experience.
At the same time, we weren’t ready to give up on the office. In fact, it was a huge asset. It was where lots of energy was derived for the company and was a great anchor in our culture. And so over the years, although we were remote-first, we were always hybrid. We were ‘in the middle’. We didn’t force ourselves to be completely one thing or the other. And that worked for us. It could have been beneficial for us to wholly choose one over the other, and I’m sure it cost us in some places, but those 20 people eventually grew to more than 300.
I choose to believe that this is the space we should elect to choose with AI. Now some people will go all in and join or be a part of the pure foundations of building the intelligence layer. Most of us will be on the periphery. And most of us are the ones that need to figure out how to thrive by utilizing AI and involving real life experts to marry the two into a hybrid and successful ecosystem.
In my own view, the designer should embrace the foundations of design that can speed their work while orchestrating even more award-winning experiences and visuals. The accountant needs to find ways to accelerate their ingestion of data sources and bring reporting and returns across the line at greater speeds and with more accuracy. The teachers should teach the use of AI and find the gaps that only humans can fill and equip their students with valuable life resources to thrive in this new world.
Lovable says that 100K+ projects are being created on their service everyday. Within the world of engineering and product development, this creates a massive problem and opportunity. That mass of people, non-coders, first time entrepreneurs, and creators will be able to make massive headway on their idea. In fact some will be able to launch their products in full without more than their prompted agent conversations.
But there will be more than a few who hit roadblocks. Some of those will just be the proof that their idea is possible but they lose steam on doing anything about it. But some will reach a crossroads where they want to move forward but need help. And that’s where we want to intersect.
Vibecore is here to help launch new AI birthed applications by providing usable audits, last mile engineering, and full product launch support. We believe that this is where humans can intersect with AI and make magic happen.
