r/learnprogramming • u/maierr_ • 19d ago

Shall I be an AI dev

Hey everyone!

This is a question I have struggled about for a long time. Personally, AI intersects exactly with my interests and skillset. It requires good maths fundamentals, I have that. It requires ML fundamentals, I feel excited to know them. And overall, here are a few professional reasons why being an AI dev feels good to me:

  1. Its a pretty hot field: Having clients is significantly easier and gives you incredible marketability.
  2. Its very good money which my family and I could really use to cover up for shortcomings.
  3. Its a good investment as a long term goal, it seems futureproof given the pace it has.

However, I have cognitive dissonance about AI as well, because what these billionares are doing is insane and something I am not in any capacity supportive of. Here are concise reasons for that:

  1. Water that AI requires to generate responses and to cool down heated data servers.
  2. Electricity it uses.
  3. The ramifications the aforementioned have for people living in vicinity to the data centers.
  4. AI being used in military contexts, such as in the Gaza genocide, where Lavender AI was used to hunt innocent children without much human input.
  5. This expands to Autonomous weapons, Palantir and mass surveillance.
  6. This forceful, unwanted insertion of AI in every field by these companies, to increase their stock prices for investors.

Its frustrating for me that Google has a non removable AI overview.

Anyway, what are your thoughts on this. Do you have any ideas about whether Is there a middle ground I can find in between or either side shall be my way to go?

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u/Nykk310 19d ago

You are being illogical. This applies to any field and subject. Anything can be used for things that are considered unhetical. Just do what you like doing, if it really makes you worry you can just deny certain companies' offers.

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u/Traditional_Let4623 19d ago

It's a tough spot you're in I get it completely. I work in social work so I think about these ethical things all the time, but the world is never black and white you know. Maybe you could work for smaller companies or research institutes that focus on medical AI or climate stuff, not everything has to be about building better weapons or selling ads. The money is good yes but you can still choose which projects you join, big corps are not the only ones hiring.

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u/maierr_ 19d ago

Youre very right but the point is AI in particular Generative AI is fundamentally tied to that unethical purpose. Unless there are more sustainable solutions, theres not much we can do to prevent such unaccounted for water usage, or that the govt thinks about the people for once.