AI Took Over the Coding. I Promoted Myself.

AI will change the world as we know it and will also hold a mirror up to each of us personally. One by one abilities that were thought to be exclusively in the human domain turn out to be not so exclusive after all. And to top it off we now have AIs that clearly exceed what humans are capable of in many different domains.

I experienced that disruption firsthand. I used to make a living programming websites. Today AIs can code better than most programmers, including me. I haven’t written any code for months, maybe a year. That was a skill that took me decades to develop and a big part of that is no longer marketable. When people ask what I do I no longer say programmer. For me that disruption sounds worse than it was.

I have always been interested in too many things. Spreading myself too thin has cost me, but in this situation it turned out to be a benefit. I can pull out one of my other business cards. Many people are not in the same position. They focussed on one skill and now that skill is much less marketable. This is harsh. Programmers, designers, musicians, writers, photographers. The list is already long and growing.

Now that coding is fast and automatic, I promoted myself to project lead. The team consists of me and several helpful AIs. I must confess I really like my new role. I can create new projects in a matter of a few weeks instead of many months. I’ve learned that the best kind of thing to start is something that I need and would use myself.

I often hear claims that “anyone can create apps.” I think this is more than a little bit overblown. You could compare it to a situation where a project lead knows nothing about programming or software development. That wouldn’t work very well. Maybe in the future no special skills will be required to make an app. Right now my decades of programming experience seems essential, even while not doing any actual coding anymore myself.

The whole experience did require me to redefine somewhat how I see myself. I became more of a product designer and organiser instead of someone focused on getting every tiny detail right, which is what coding requires. AI did work as a mirror of sorts, requiring me to look at myself, reflect and adjust.

A project I just finished is a website where people can get a taste of the latest AIs without committing to an expensive top-tier subscription: Try The Latest Model. A $10 pass buys you 15 turns and never expires. Each turn is one prompt and reply.

As a token of appreciation for allowing my weekly blog post to visit your email inbox, I am offering every subscriber of this blog a free pass. With the free pass you get five turns. No registration or payment information required on the site. The free pass expires one week after you receive it if not used. Outside programming a user interface that connects to the API, the only other way to try GPT-6 Astra would be to subscribe to the $100 a month pro tier. So now, with my new website and this complimentary pass you get to talk to the best model money can buy, for free.

Let me give you a few tips on how to get the most out of your pass. Say you had Albert Einstein over for dinner. You wouldn’t be asking him to explain multiplication tables, right? So save the simpler questions for a model that you already subscribe to, or one of the publicly available free tiers.

To get the most out of Astra and get a taste of its remarkable abilities, ask it about a problem in an area that you understand very well, but don’t have the solution to yet. Generally, give it a task or problem that you didn’t expect an AI to be able to deal with. Please note, this is text chat only. Images and artifacts are not (yet) integrated.

To receive your free pass, all you need to do is reply to this email, or the welcome email after subscribing, with the word “astra” in the body. I will then email you the pass. Yes, I am trying to get more subscribers to this blog. So if you know anyone who might be interested in trying out the latest AI for free, let them know. Full disclosure: with the free passes I am not only promoting my blog, but also that website that I hope to make some money with.

Finally, let me say that I am not someone to mindlessly adopt AI. I am obviously also not an anti-AI absolutist. AI offers us the opportunity to accelerate medical research to unprecedented levels, raise standards of living for everyone and make work optional. At the same time there is the disruption that has already begun. Something should be done to help people that got displaced, especially in countries where a social safety net is insufficient or non-existent.

The integration of AI offers different challenges and opportunities to different people. I gave myself a promotion and am making the most of the new possibilities.