In the past ten years, I worked with one guy from Nigeria and a bunch of people from Iran. Bitcoin (or rather cryptocurrencies in general) have been more than just mere gimmicks.
Sending money from one side of the world to another, for such a low fees, even when the central bank of Nigeria is blocking USD transfers, even when bank transfers to Iran are being blocked, has been very useful in itself.
As for AI, yes if you use it as a God, you will be disappointed. Yes it can’t do everything. Yes it will hallucinate.
But it’s been a great learning environment for me, I keep asking questions to get an overview of things.
I used to learn concepts such as « clean architecture » because AI is never tired, it can provide endless variations to the same problems, until you better understand the underlying principles and the recurring patterns.
When I work on a project, 20-30% is creative, cutting edge, never seen before. 70% is CRUD, necessary boilerplate.
I know what I am supposed to be doing, I can verify the result, double check the validity of it.
Why would I waste hours typing letters?
Do I rely on AI for everything? No I don’t.
But pretending it’s completely useless, is nonsensical.
Yes it’s just statistically inferring the next token, but it’s actually a very simple, powerful concept.