AI is all over the news right now. Everywhere I look on social media, I see some new ChatGPT plugin, some new photo created with generative AI, and to be honest, I don’t blame you. It’s safe to say that the tech community has jumped on the AI bandwagon like a fish on a barrel. With new software, new features, and updates every day, we’ve quickly entered a “swimming pool” situation. Do we embrace all these advances and see how they evolve? Or do we ignore them and hope they go away? And what about something in between?
Looking at the adoption curve above, I would say we are still in the early stages of adoption. There are a lot of people talking about AI on the internet, but not too many of us actually use it in our day-to-day operations. However, AI’s day will come when we start to see it everywhere. It won’t be something we notice, it’ll just be there, and it’ll make software more beautiful. For me, I’ve gone all in and it’s taken over my planning, designing, and implementing software. I’m not a full-time enterprise architect, but I run my website myself and it’s got a ton of automation software and services. So, I wanted to share with you how I’m approaching application design with this incredibly powerful AI I have at my disposal.
A Quick Foreword
Before I continue, I would like to address a fallacy that I have seen too often in the technical and design decision-making process (and which often leads to a lack of innovation). There is no “perfect” software. The earlier you settle for “close enough”, the sooner you will not only be happy, but you will also be happy for your customers. Do not enter any design process assuming you are creating the perfect software, even if you have designed it “perfectly”. When you go to implementation, you will go through many iterations that will completely change the software. It is impossible to make everyone happy. People do not need “perfect” software, they need something that solves the problem. I know that AI is not perfect, it has issues, and it may throw me curveballs from time to time. That is okay, as long as I can solve the problem in an innovative way that is 80% correct. Let’s now move on to some of the new opportunities we have with AI’s rapidly growing availability.
