AI compresses time
AI compresses time, not complexity. Many people have the naive notion that thanks to AI, anyone can do anything now. I've seen this a lot with app development, suddenly everyone can build an app. That's true, but that has always been true; before the dawn of AI coding assistants, anyone was able to code their own app, the barrier was maybe taller, but not unpassable. The only thing that's different now is the use of natural language instead of pure programming code, but everything else is as difficult as it always was.
AI is just a new level of abstraction (binary code → assembly language → low-level languages → high-level languages → frameworks and libraries → AI assistants), but the complexity underneath is still there. To make an app that really works you have to have a clear problem to solve, you have to understand the problem, you have to design the solution, envision the desired outcome and the process leading to it. You have to understand UX and hopefully UI, you have to think in a modular way and plan ahead. You have to test, test and test; thinking of all the edge cases and all the user's needs. Even if you're the only user. You don't want to keep building this app indefinitely, finding new bugs every time you use it. You want it to be reliable, fast and easy to use. That takes effort. The better the app, the more the effort.
Even if the obstacle of learning code has been surpassed, you will find that using natural language is an obstacle in itself. A lot of people have a hard time putting into words exactly what they want and how they want it. And even if you can, you'll have to think about how your words could be misinterpreted by an AI model, how they could be too vague or too restrictive. And if successful, then test, and test, and test. And then you'll have to describe all your little issues and make sure they are understood and solved. And you'll have to make sure that the solutions didn't interfere with the desired outcome. And even then, there will be bugs and issues that the AI won't be able to find, understand and solve, because it knows orders of magnitude less than you, it only has one piece of the puzzle —the code— but you're supposed to have everything else. So you'll have to roll your sleeves and try and find what's happening by yourself. And you'll have to learn or at least basically understand how databases work, how servers work, what capabilities specific technologies have. Those people claiming they built an entire app in thirty minutes from their phone have built nothing, just a useless blob of unusable code, a collection of files that have the unconnected parts of what could potentially be an app. Far from a product. Far from the solution to a problem.
And this is true for all professional fields. Yes, AI can give you marketing strategies, business models, reports and product ideas. But it is all just text, a blob of unusable text, a collection of files that have the unconnected parts of what could potentially be a business idea. Far from a business. Far from the solution to a problem. Just a piece of the puzzle that needs someone to plan, understand, refine and execute.
It isn't that the outputs of these models are unusable, far from it, they can be very valuable… in the right hands. You can make things faster, but you still have to make things. AI compresses time, not complexity.