This really is different, and I say that as someone who spent a lot of time on expert systems, not as someone who is overly bought into AI hype.
The problem with expert systems is that even if the tooling was perfect the people using them needed a rather nuanced and sophisticated understanding of ontologies. That just wasn’t going to happen. There is not enough of that kind of expertise to go around. Efforts to train people largely failed. I think the intentional undermining of developer salaries pushed a lot of smart people out of the software industry making the problem even worse.
That’s what makes AI special, the ability to deliver value even when used by unsophisticated operators. Many workflows can largely stay the same and AI can be sprinkled in where it makes the most sense. I use it for documentation writing and UI asset production and it’s better in that role than the people I used to pay.
The problem with expert systems is that even if the tooling was perfect the people using them needed a rather nuanced and sophisticated understanding of ontologies. That just wasn’t going to happen. There is not enough of that kind of expertise to go around. Efforts to train people largely failed. I think the intentional undermining of developer salaries pushed a lot of smart people out of the software industry making the problem even worse.
That’s what makes AI special, the ability to deliver value even when used by unsophisticated operators. Many workflows can largely stay the same and AI can be sprinkled in where it makes the most sense. I use it for documentation writing and UI asset production and it’s better in that role than the people I used to pay.