⬅️ Jumping Someone Else's Trained Model 🧭 Shock the Chaos Monkey ➡️

AI Feel You

July 23, 2023 by Jay Cuthrell ai platform-engineering devx devops llm terraform hashicorp cloudformation aws

This week’s musical inspiration in title and lyrics:

https://open.spotify.com/track/1Ob57NqUydp5cC3FCNV4Gy?si=0b18b7171314483d

This week we take a look at recent updates to AI in and around platform engineering and DevX.

Getting Informed

Clearly, the inclusion of AI in everyday discussions is more likely now than ever before. But is talking about AI outpacing the realities of AI?

When considering platform engineering, where is AI going to impact DevX? What is the pragmatic view of applying AI in an appropriate and meaningful way to generate value for software development teams?

Fudge Sunday for this week, once again, has more questions than answers. What a time to be alive!

Now it’s time for reading 📖, watching 📺, and listening 🎧 suggestions:

📖 - Blog posts

First, 📖 IncrementalOps in which Michael Coté suggests we all simmer down a bit because transformational impacts often take longer than the human exuberance and expectations for rapid change.
Second, 📖 Furthering our AI ambitions in which Microsoft sets a $30 per user per month price point for Microsoft 365 Copilot AI Tool as what might come to be known as the first viewpoint on the _perceived value_ of AI tooling for every software developer.

🎧 - Podcast episodes

First, 🎧 Generative AI: What’s Ahead for Enterprises? in which Heather Joslyn interviews Kinetica CEO Nima Negahban on governance, guided access, generative search, and getting past the hype to make real impacts on DevX.
Second, 🎧 The connection between Generative AI, LLM and SBOMs in which DJ Schleen interviews Tracy Bannon on problems, claims, fears, realities, and what’s really happening with AI in DevSecOps as well as DevX pursuits.

📺 - Videos

First, 📺 Workshop: How Kubiya uses LLMs in its DevOps Assistant in which Kubiya CTO Shaked Askayo and CRO Shani Shoman shows how powerful a simplified Slack / ChatOps experience in the future could be.
Second, 📺 GitLab Generative AI Feature Walkthrough in which GitLab Group Product Manager Taylor McCaslin makes the case for using AI to improve overall DevX.
Third, 📺 IaC Migration using AI: From CloudFormation to Terraform in Seconds in which [Whitney Lee](https://www
.linkedin.com/in/whitneylee/) of [VMware](https://tanzu.vmware.com/developer/tv/
enlightning/47/) speaks with Firefly CTO Sefi Genis about AIAC use cases.

And lead me through Babylon 🎶

Depending on your media intake levels, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is either reaching a fever pitch stage or just starting to get interesting. But is the reality somewhere in between or somewhere else entirely?

Readers might recall innovation related slogans that defined how companies focused certain software development efforts _first_. Each slogan was meant to capture the zeitgeist that conveyed direction towards relevance as _first_ — and which way the wind was blowing in technology.

For example:

Design-first 👩‍🎨
Web-first 🔗
Mobile-first 📲
API-first 👩‍💻
Cloud-first ☁️
Security-first 🧐
Privacy-first 🔐
AI-first 🤖 (_we are probably here now_)
Women-and-Children-first 🤓 (_or, what I call ESTEEM for short_)

This “Women-and-Children-first” view of AI gets me thinking outside of platform engineering and DevX alone.

And lead me through oblivion 🎶

A decade ago, my blog post “ESTEEM is STEM plus Ethics plus Empathy” considered disruptive technologies such as AI and the need for expanding STEM to include Ethics and Empathy.

Then in 2016, my blog post “Have your AI call my AI” was provoked by hyperbolic claims of AI taking over everything.

Next in 2020, my blog post “Social Telecom 2030” looked back in time to look ahead for the next decade with some vague hints at AI along the way.

Now, as we enter 2024, societal considerations for AI will need to shift from hyperbole to the consideration of practical impacts and the need for increased caution as well as public private governance through widely inclusive partnerships.

Having fully democratized access to AI at scale will have profound implications for society.
Education will expand from reading, writing, and arithmetic to include AI prompting.
Ensuring the right to AI will be as important as other human rights.

What if every human had a fundamental right to have their own AI… for the express purpose of interfacing with other AI?

But I digress…

So, what will be the next big thing in AI for platform engineering and DevX?

Until then… Place your bets!