I’m in IT at an upper level and know painfully well what “AI” really is and that it’s not the disruptor people think it will be. However I feel like I can’t post it anywhere without being judged about it as almost every exec I know has bought into it hook, line and sinker. Even other people I talk to about the issues and limitations look at me like I’m completely weird “you’re in IT and you don’t embrace AI? wtf is wrong with you?”
So what do you all do? I don’t want to make things career limiting but I feel like I’m screaming in the dark seeing where things will really go. It reminds me a lot of the move to cloud and everyone going all in on it without knowing the real ramifications.
I’m trying to get a job (and failing) after a layoff at the end of last year, and maybe 1/4 of the job postings I see mention you need to be familiar with “AI.” So, yeah, in interviews, when AI is brought up, I try to be pro-AI, but cautious. I even messed around with stuff like LangChain/LangGraph because I see so many job postings that require stuff like that, but the results are underwhelming. Now I’m seeing a lot of job postings that require experience in Azure’s cloud AI stuff, but I’m not paying to learn that. I have “real” ML experience, and it frustrates me that many of the responses I get back from applications just want me to glue shitty LLM tools together.