I want you to have a little more imagination about what AIs could do, and the weird consequences it will have on product, design, and development work.
Picture this.
You’re reviewing your team’s amazing new home page design with your boss. Your boss likes it, but then he says, “that link there — you need to change it to a button.”
You disagree. Do you say…
- “This isn’t possible due to technical constraints”
- “UX best practices say that it should be a link, not a button”
- “You got it” (and do it)
- “You got it” (then ignore it)
- Other
I fight this kind of crap. If I have the right boss, they’ll trust me and my team to make the right decision. Or to put it in a snarky way, “why hire us if we just do what you say? We know what we’re doing.”
But now I want you to reimagine this situation a little differently…
Your boss is reviewing the new home page design. Your boss says “that link there — you need to change it to a button.” The AI changes it to a button.
You aren’t there to fight back. You all got fired when the AI replaced the whole dev, UX, and product team. Whatever your boss says, the AI changes it immediately.
You might think this scenario is unrealistic. I say that you’re not using your imagination about where our AI future can go.
There are two points I want to make here. First, AI only needs to be good enough. Second, AI will make bad taste worse.
The Good Enough
Many people think their jobs will not be replaced by AI. They say things like
- “AI is coming for everyone else’s job except mine.”
- “Could AI have created the iPhone?”
- “AI doesn’t have style. I have style.”
- “AIs aren’t great at anything. I’m great at something.”
It won’t matter. AI coming for all those jobs.
AI won’t need to create the iPhone to replace your job, or have style, or be great at anything. AI just has to be Good Enough.
Good Enough to write the requirements for a feature. Good Enough to make some wireframes. Good Enough to write working code. Good Enough to make changes when it’s told to.
This is the Innovator’s Dilemma that Clayton Christensen told us about. Breakthrough products don’t have to be perfect. They’re often worse in some ways. But they’re great in specific ways, and those great bits vastly outweigh the worse bits.
AI only has to be Good Enough to replace your job. The AI can be wrong — often wrong — and it’s still going to be cheaper and more efficient to have an AI than a human.
Today we need an 8 person team and 3 weeks to ship a new feature. With AI, it’s 2 people and less than a day. Can you imagine what product development could be like when a team has 1/4th the people and is 10x more efficient with AI?
The AI powered team can launch 99 failures in the same time that the non-AI team shipped 1 option. Even if the AI team fails 99 times, it’s still better than “shipped 1”.
Can you imagine what you’d do if you could brainstorm and launch 10 experiments in one day with the help of AI? If not, you’re not thinking hard enough about what AI is capable of.
As good as this sounds, the Good Enough has consequences.
Worse bad taste
AI will make bad taste worse.
Your boss doesn’t know that the button is a bad idea, but he really wants that button.
Your boss tells the AI to change the link to a button. The AI changes the link to a button because that’s what it was told to do. The AI also doesn’t know that this is a bad idea, and it doesn’t care.
Your boss has bad taste. Bad taste about which features to build. Bad taste about how your product looks. Bad taste about how it runs.
With AI, your boss just has to say “do this” and AI will do it, no matter how bad the idea. AI just does what it’s told. Nobody with good taste will be around to stop your boss.
AI will proliferate bad taste.
Today, you and your team complain and fight when told to add this feature or make it look this way or add hacks to make something work. AI doesn’t complain and can’t fight. The AI just does the work. That’s one more reason why your boss will hire AI over you.
AIs will take someone’s bad taste and enable them to do to the worst things. You and your team will get fired — replaced by the AI — so your boss’s bad taste will prevail.
Coda
Its easy to read this and think I’m an AI doomist. I’m not. I’m also not saying I’m right.
I’m saying there’s a lack of imagination about how AIs can transform work.
I’m saying there’s a very real future where AI is just a little more capable. That “little more capable” is Good Enough for your boss to choose the AI over you.
I’m saying AIs with just a little more capability will cause bad taste to spread.
And it’s already happening. My students are using AI. I hear more stories of workplaces using AI. And companies are already hiring AI over hiring the people because it’s Good Enough.
Some people think that many jobs will shift to “editors for AI output.” If you think that a career in babysitting AI’s outputs sounds fun, then that’s great for you.
But I don’t think that’s why people pursue degrees in design or software development or medicine or teaching or air conditioning repair. They want to solve problems. They want autonomy. They don’t want an AI doing the work that they enjoy. Who the fuck wants their job title to be “senior editor for AI-produced designs”?
AI is coming for every job. It will affect us in ways we can’t predict. And I’m asking you to be more imaginative about it.
if you’re not thinking about what your career will look like with AI in the mix, you’re gonna be sad when AI takes the best part of your job — or takes your job entirely.
You have to be great at your job, but AI only has to be Good Enough. As soon as AI is Good Enough, your boss’s bad taste will win. He’ll make the AI change the link into a button — and you won’t be around to complain about it.
Plan your career accordingly.
If you want even spicier takes than this, how about inviting me to speak to your company or organization?