I am getting fed up by the hype around fashionable ‘Artificial Intelligence’. Everything should be Artificially Intelligent nowadays (ref my previous post ‘How Automation Should Not Be Marketed as Intelligent‘). Thus I very much like this post of Paul Graham on ‘Fashionable Problems‘. His point is that too many people work on the latest fashionable technology or problem, and too little on other important aspects.
“Even though lots of people have worked hard in the field, only a small fraction of the space of possibilities has been explored, because they’ve all worked on similar things. Even the smartest, most imaginative people are surprisingly conservative when deciding what to work on. People who would never dream of being fashionable in any other way get sucked into working on fashionable problems.”
On this other hand this consideration also shows that there are great opportunities in working on other things than the latest fashion (although of course it may be much more difficult to get funded). And this is what I like to consider: non-conventional people that follow their interest irrespective of the latest fashion. Paul Graham reminds us actually that “The best protection against getting drawn into working on the same things as everyone else may be to genuinely love what you’re doing. Then you’ll continue to work on it even if you make the same mistake as other people and think that it’s too marginal to matter.”
Thus, do not worry too much about the latest fashion on tech. There are so many other areas where progress would be profitable for humankind. Don’t let yourself be deterred. Find what you’re passionate about and go for it!
