"And so I think that democratizing, activating every region, activating every country to join the A.I advance, is probably one of the more important things, rather than convincing everybody it's too complicated, it's too dangerous, it's too mystical and only two or three people in the world should be allowed to do that."
To be honest, the first time I heard the term, I was perturbed and more than a little offended. Like what, tech needs to be democratized? As opposed to it being a dictatorship right now? However, after researching the term a bit, it's not as acrimonious as one might think.
So, what is Tech Democratization exactly?
Tech Democratization describes a state of tech where creation of software (web portals, applications and such) can be carried out without relying on the expertise of technically qualified people. In short, laypeople would no longer need tech professionals for these things.At least, that's the promise of Tech Democratization. It brings the power to create, to the masses, instead of keeping it in the hands of the elite few. More importantly, the power to create without needing a technical foundation acquirable only by years of training. As a concept, Tech Democratization is not new. One could even argue that it started all the way back in the 60s where high level languages were created so that people like me wouldn't need to deal with Assembly, thus opening up possibilities for a less hardcore breed of nerd.
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| Building without the need for expertise. |
How about frameworks? Frameworks were created back in the day (and are still in use now) to reduce repetition in coding, and thus reduce the amount of code developers needed to write for a typical application. Now that code in scaffolding no longer needed to be written from scratch, surely this meant that application programming was now opened to a lot more people.
Web development came up with content management systems and even entire website builders to allow the man in the street to create websites without needing to know any HTML, CSS or JavaScript. Low-Code platforms bring this to a new level, allowing laypeople to create simple applications without knowing having much of a technical foundation at all.
From this point of view, A.I is merely the latest in a long line of innovations that outsource the repetitive parts of writing code to the system, so that the human can focus on the creative bits.
The Scariness of Tech Democratization
A.I is a tool made by actual software engineers. Even if non-technical people can now use this tool to create software that would previously be out of their reach, this still does not make them engineers. It sounds obvious now the way I say it, but it is human nature to get carried away by the perception of ones own perceived ability.The danger is that non-technical people using A.I as a tool to generate code, will start thinking that they can replace actual developers. It does not matter whether or not this is true. What matters is that these laypersons, having not actually encountered software development in all its glorious and terrible complexity, will create a few working apps and start wondering what the big deal is, precisely because they are unburdened by that knowledge.
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| How much should non-techies control? |
Imagine a world in which software that runs air traffic routes or maintains banking transactions, is created with the help of A.I and people who don't actually understand software development, but are given the ability to act as if they do. Are you afraid yet? No? Perhaps you should be.
Me? I'm at the tail end of my career. Professionally, there's nothing I could lose to A.I that I don't already plan on giving up in a few years. I don't fear losing my job to A.I. It's a tiny consequence compared to the terrible implications I just outlined. And that's all I'm doing - outlining those implications. In no way do I think Tech Democratization is a bad thing.
Besides, it would be hypocritical of me to start decrying Tech Democratization now. I, too, am a beneficiary of Tech Democratization. Were it not for the significant effort put in by engineers better than myself, I would not have the tools - databases, operating systems and programming languages - I use so readily today. I recognize and acknowledge my privelege, and would never presume to place myself in the same bracket as the tech professionals who made those tools.
There's a stark difference between developers benefitting from such tools, and laypersons doing the same. Developers have (generally) the technical foundation, in some cases to the point where those tools would merely be helping them do things they already know how to do, but faster. Laypersons, on the other hand, would be hapless infants without those tools, at least where accomplishing those specific technical tasks were concerned. That, I think, is an important distinction.
In conclusion
Look, I'm not some sort of tech elitist or wannabe gatekeeper. I'm just not. But it's one thing to allow the general public the power to write software. It's quite another to consider them on the same level as people who have been doing this for years (or, in the case of Jensen Huang, claim that "everyone is now a programmer"), just because there are tools to help them accomplish the same goals. That is laughable. |
| Faster than Phelps. |
It is absurdity on the level of me claiming to be as qualified an athlete as Michael Phelps just because I can outpace him on a jetski. Or claiming to be as qualified as my family doctor just because I can read up on medical symptoms on WebMD.
Tech Democratization has value. Like all things with value, however, one has to know exactly how far to take it. Speeding up the work of developers or automating away routine tasks is a great idea. Giving every schmuck the tools to write simple apps? Also a pretty good idea. Allowing them to think that software development is actually that easy? There are not enough words in the dictionary to describe what a horrible idea that would be.
Democracy now!
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