One of the most enjoyable aspects of this industry is connecting and collaborating with other web professionals. Web designers are always eager to share their knowledge, benefiting everyone involved. The amount I’ve learned from this generosity is immeasurable.
There are also chances to form professional relationships. We hire each other for tasks like coding, marketing, support, or business consulting. This helps us expand our capabilities and increase revenue, leading to new products and services born from these connections.
Like everything in our industry, artificial intelligence (AI) is set to impact these professional connections. We’re experimenting with this technology to become more efficient and productive. Although we might be in the early stages, it’s likely there will be a human cost to adopting AI.
Let’s examine the potential benefits and drawbacks of fully embracing AI and its effect on our relationships.
Greater Productivity and Expanded Capabilities
One key discovery about AI is its ability to write code with relative ease. It can create a new WordPress plugin (or a framework for one) in minutes. It can also troubleshoot code snippets instantly.
These tasks used to take hours, days, or weeks. AI has saved me countless hours searching support forums and blog posts. Sometimes, I would share my issues on social media, hoping for a kind soul to help.
Nowadays, AI generally guides me in the right direction. There are several positives to this setup.
Firstly, I feel more self-sufficient when working with code. It might be ironic since the machine writes the code for me, but there’s value in not burdening others.
AI also boosts my productivity and capabilities. Client requests that once stressed me out are now less daunting. While not always easy, I’m delivering solutions faster than ever.
The downside? An individual working this way might not have a significant impact. The issue arises when AI is used for everything on a large scale.
Web Developers Working in Silos
The cumulative effect of “doing it ourselves” with AI is reduced collaboration. For instance, why would I assign a task to a fellow freelancer if AI can handle it? It saves time and money.
Agencies that rely on contractors will do the same. They’ll have less incentive to outsource parts of a project because AI is cheaper and easier, even if it adds more work to an employee’s load.
This will lead to fewer gigs for some of us. We’ll face an economic impact, losing some recurring revenue we rely on. It will also require a shift to creating our own products rather than working for others.
Another potential side effect is becoming more isolated from the community. We might interact more with bots than people (this is already true for me). We could be less inclined to share our work or explore others’ creations.
If we’re not cautious, it might also lead to less in-person interaction. AI won’t render conferences and WordCamps irrelevant, but some may feel less motivated to learn from others. Why travel and attend a session when AI can fulfill my needs?
Sharing knowledge is a significant part of what web professionals do. Once we’re past AI’s experimental phase, we might have fewer tips to share and fewer people interested in listening.
