Alex Wybraniec

Technical Lead of
Digital Products and Services

What is the
Future of “AI”
?

I honestly don't know^*

^*I tried. I really did.

Well...

Twelve zeros

Nine zeros

AI Spring

2010s

2022

3.5 2001

string tokenisation

NLP

neural networks

Generative

Pre-trained

Transformers

G

P

T

2017

Human

Artificial

ELIZA

1960s

psychotherapist

prompts

Well, my boyfriend made me come here.

Your boyfriend made you come here?

He says I'm depressed much of the time.

I am sorry to hear you are depressed.

It's true. I'm unhappy.

Do you think coming here will help you not to be unhappy?

“AI”

323 (BC)

worship

comfort

both

scepticism

wild excitement

pragmatism

?

Thing 1: Stop saying AI

Modern “AI”

machine learning

Generative AI

Magic

Thing 2: No magic in the public sector

"Every time we figure out a piece of it, it stops being magical;
we say, 'Oh, that's just a computation.'"

Rodney Brooks

Magic

"AI"

Model

Weight

Retrieval-Augmented Generation

Cache-Augmented Generation

Temperature

Drift

Degrade

Bias

Thing 3: Listen to real people

230 people

97%

real people

benefit

value

Economics

"45% of all AI answers had at least one significant issue"

"20% contained major accuracy issues"

"31% of responses showed serious sourcing problems"

Image illustrating wrongness in AI responses

benefits

Data analysis

(Joke coming up)

Powerpoint

Aside

Vibe

There was a period earlier in the year where I was frequently told someone had attempted to tackle the tickets in my backlog simply by asking AI to do it.

While nodding and smiling, and saying supportive things, I had to explain to non-technical stakeholders that as a practise we don’t put anything into production without a thorough code review and a plan for how to maintain and support it.

That barrier doesn’t necessarily mean that vibe coded work can’t go public, but often there is just enough overhead that means it would easier to just re-write it from scratch than take the risk.

We now treat vibe coded projects as our UX team treats our Miro or Figma sketches. They can be a great way of explaining a concept, but there is almost always a large gap in the nuance of implementation.

So how do I wrap this up...

Point 4: Don't worry about being left behind.

I’ve alluded to it but it’s been 25 years since I started learning about AI.

“All you need is attention“ the pioneering paper on Transformers was published in 2017

ChatGPT was announced three years ago last week.

Deepseek 3, AI’s Sputnik moment was this year.

Nvidia added a trillion dollars to its value in three months.

Experts at the recent 75th anniversary of the Turing test, the bench mark of perceived intelligence for many years, believe we are at least 20 years away from AGI

The AI field has seen winters and springs before, and as a greater industry we know all about hype circles and bubbles bursting.

What’s my point? The space is both historic and stagnant, and fast moving with high volatility. There are going to be winners and losers, and dead ends and promising futures, and I highly doubt we’re any near reaching a plateau of establishment.

AI, in all of it’s flavours, promises the potential of an enlightened future, insight and foresight beyond our wildest dreams.

But like it or not, Generative AI in its current form is a capitalist venture.

and Capitalism doesn’t like high barriers to adoption.

So, finally, and maybe this is the thing I do know, do not worry about getting left behind.

If you don’t buy into this today you’ll get left behind is the refrain of marketing chumps and confidence tricksters.

So rememver new magic happens all the time, but it is our job is to wade through it and find the bits that add the real value to the people who pay our salaries.

Alex Wybraniec

Technical Lead ofDigital Products and Services

What is theFuture of “AI”?

I honestly don't know*

*I tried. I really did.

Well...

Twelve zeros

Nine zeros

AI Spring

2010s

2022

3.5

2001

string tokenisation

NLP

neural networks

Generative

Pre-trained

Transformers

G

P

T

2017

Human

Artificial

ELIZA

1960s

psychotherapist

prompts

Well, my boyfriend made me come here.

Your boyfriend made you come here?

He says I'm depressed much of the time.

I am sorry to hear you are depressed.

It's true. I'm unhappy.

Do you think coming here will help you not to be unhappy?

“AI”

323 (BC)

worship

comfort

both

scepticism

wild excitement

pragmatism

?

Thing 1: Stop saying AI

Modern “AI”

machine learning

Generative AI

Magic

Thing 2: No magic in the public sector

"Every time we figure out a piece of it, it stops being magical;we say, 'Oh, that's just a computation.'"

Rodney Brooks

Magic

"AI"

Model

Weight

Retrieval-Augmented Generation

Cache-Augmented Generation

Temperature

Drift

Degrade

Bias

Bias

Thing 3: Listen to real people

230 people

97%

97%

real people

benefit

value

Economics

"45% of all AI answers had at least one significant issue"

"20% contained major accuracy issues"

"31% of responses showed serious sourcing problems"

benefits

Data analysis

(Joke coming up)

Powerpoint

Aside

Vibe

Technical Lead of
Digital Products and Services

What is the
Future of “AI”
?

I honestly don't know^*

^*I tried. I really did.

"Every time we figure out a piece of it, it stops being magical;
we say, 'Oh, that's just a computation.'"