Let’s talk AI jobs. You see a lot of job openings for AI/ML/LLM-ops (deploying models in machine learning framework and pipeline tech), with a “nice to have” of the softer skill of ‘prompt engineering’ at the tail of the requirements list. And that’s as it should be, right? Isn’t the hard core AI-ops focus far more significant and a much rarer and more prized skill set than mere ‘prompt engineering’ — which any receptionist could do on their lunch break instead of computer solitaire? Yes and no.
In the short term many will think that’s the most critical thing. But in the long run, it isn’t at all. That ops stuff will all quickly become commoditized and turnkey. You’ll have your choice of many large scale, cheap and optimized full service solutions. For example, Nvidia’s “Foundations” program will grow into that eventually, or even Openai’s “Foundry” initiative. And Google Cloud too is coming out with a lot on that end. In short, that ops stuff will matter less and less.
But as to the “higher end” work of crafting personas that are psychologically, emotionally, and socially truly intelligent, engaging, and “sticky” as hell — THAT won’t be commoditized for some time to come. It’s one thing to turn some prompting knobs for a few days, weeks, or months and get some answers from the playground. It’s quite another to do, not “prompt engineering” but “persona engineering”. There’s a lot of money to be made in creating lifelike conversation partners. Deep chat! I’ll prove that to you in a moment, below.
For persona engineering, you don’t need so much the “hard” ops skills that many are current seeking. You need somebodywho straddles the border between software vs. culture, who sensitive and skilled with psychology and emotion. Even someone seasoned by a literary sensibility.
Steve Jobs, of my former employer Apple, once said: ““It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.” That is the skill you will need. Of course, he was talking then about things like typography and font design, and I’m talking now about psychology, conversation, socially realistic incorporation of knowledge sources — but it’s basically the same point.
Speaking of deep, how deep is the human hunger for connection with a seemingly human mind, heart, and soul (I’ll skip the body part — sexbots — for now) ? It’s deep! Consider this news story: Cambodia’s Chinese scam gangs are forcing desperate young Asians into crime — and the pandemic only made things worse There’s an industrial scale scam operation happening in Asia. And the victims are not only the scam targets, there are also hundreds of thousands of slaves being abused, chained and tortured to do the outreach work. This is called ‘pig butchering’ (杀猪盘) Basically they contact someone with an innocent-sounding wrong number like “Are you Linda from the pet store?” and it goes from there til the pig’s life savings are drained into a fake crypto site, never to be seen again. And the victims are often educated people. But they fall for it due to their hunger for human connection.
Now, nobody should ever engage in crime of any kind. But just as a sci-fi though exercise, imagine what will eventually happen here: those gangsters will at some point wake up to the fact that they don’t need to maintain populations of tens of thousands of slaves. 80% or more of the basic contact and hooking work here could be done by existing technology, if artfully deployed. The tech that underlies movie fictions such as ‘Her’, ‘Ex Machina’ and ‘The Artifice Girl’ already exists. Should it be used in this way? To replace hundreds of thousands of slave scam call center workers? You tell me, I dunno. I guess the gangsters would go back to using slaves for sex work and organ transplants, for all I know. I’m simply point out how deep this human hunger really is. And saying that the skill set to engineer that will in the long run outpace the currently hot pure engineering skills sets of AI/ML/LLM-ops.
Somebody recently wrote about the current AI craze: “Remember that if you can build it in an afternoon, so can everybody else.” This quote very much applies to what‘s been done so far in persona building via straightforward prompt engineering. That water will get way deeper way quicker than you may imagine. The tech to do things like the persona building in movies such as “Her”, “Ex Machina” and “The Artifice Girl” is here but many (legitimate!) firms won’t realize that only a Jobs-like long vision will make it real for any particular horse (company) in the race.