AI makes software cheap to build. Great. Except the software was never the problem.
Before AI, engineering was seen as the bottleneck. Software existed to assist human processes, and there was always more of it wanted than anyone could afford to build. Too expensive. Too slow. Too complicated.
Now the assumption is that AI has fixed this. All that software that was previously too costly or time-consuming to create is suddenly easy and fast. The bottleneck is gone. Exponential growth awaits.
I have never agreed with this concept.
I've always been the one pushing back, arguing for optimising the business and human processes first, because flawed logic can rarely be solved by software.
That was always the real bottleneck. Software never solved it. It just took the blame. "It's taking too long to build" and "it's too complicated" were more comfortable explanations than "we've asked for a program that solves an unsolvable problem". AI-generated code won't solve it either. It'll just deliver the unsolvable problem faster.
Here's the bit nobody wants to hear. Humans always value their "thinking" as part of a process. The judgement calls. The weighing up. The it depends.
But when subjective decision-making is involved, the process needs to be changed to be objective or deterministic before a programmatic solution will actually be useful. Not augmented. Not accelerated. Changed.
That's the step everyone skips, because it means telling someone their thinking is the part being removed.
I used to run a mail order business. My colleague handled the day-to-day while I looked after the tech and the website. The phrase "headless chicken" comes to mind. Doing this and that until the parcel collection was due, then frantically running around getting things packed and labels printed.
On his days off, I'd handle it. I created a process and a routine for how to prioritise things, and by midday I'd be done. No chaos. Just a process anyone could follow. It was boring, but it worked.
He felt his value came from being able to manage that chaos. Probably enjoyed the adrenaline. That's the attachment to subjective judgement, standing right there in a warehouse holding a tape gun.
Yes, software often helps in parts of a process. But to truly take advantage of software and AI, the processes need to change first.
That sounds simple. I appreciate it's often a huge challenge, especially when it affects how large teams have operated for years. Regardless, this is the real bottleneck. The businesses prepared to invest in restructuring the way they operate will be the only ones seeing the real benefit of the exponential growth everyone expects from AI.
Everyone else just gets headless chickens with better tools.