A Director-level client had to present reasons to the Board why to include AI into the business. No-one actually knew what that meant, so the King of Debug was tasked with coming up with some answers.
Like anyone with half a brain, he got Google AI to tell him what was what, It quickly bandied about enough choice phrases such as "Intelligent Digital Twin Systems" and "Energy system optimization model" to easily fill a Powerpoint, so phew - job done.
But underneath the hype and fluff, the bottom line became very clear: "AI can be applied across all key functions within the industry, from accelerating the R&D pipeline to improving methodology and back-office functions. Watch out, pal."
Let it not be said that the King of Debug is an egotist, but a cursory examination of the industries he has passed through tends to illustrate an extraordinary ability as a professional harbinger.
The King entered the graphics field in the early eighties with CS10 illustration boards, photo-typesetting and PMT cameras all the rage, but by the end of the decade Desktop Publishing had been mastered and it was game over for analogue artworking and the last piece of red film ever to be professionally cut in the UK was in 1994, by an elderly artworker in Dundee using a Swann-Morton 11 scalpel.
Interested in the powerful computers that powered digital repro in the early nineties, the King learnt how to emulate their high-end processes on desktop machines. Half a decade later he jumped ship to dive into the world wide web, just in time for the industry to capsize and send the likes of Barco and Scitex back to the drawing board.
A merry time was had over the next decade or two, learning how to code and marry it all up with traditional visual skills.
Back then, when coders hit a problem they would look it up on the forums where like-minded users were grappling with the same or similar issues. Solutions were co-operatively discovered, re-posted and everyone's knowledge grew proportionately.
The web career went on and on as the interweb matured. It was unfortunate that the print industry was being destroyed in the process, but that wasn't directly the King of Debug's fault. Honest. Ten years passed, then twenty, and it looked like a job in web development was a keeper.
Then one lockdown, the King had a little play around with AI. It was early days for public-facing machine learning, but by adapting an example from an MIT thesis and downloading lots of Python libraries he discovered he could write a primitive AI-trained web app to solve a blank Sudoku puzzle. And there it was - the future of web development was inevitable.
What, you ask, will be the future for the general interweb? Certainly, the King is convinced that 90% of the humans wiho are currently writing or managing code will have been superseded by - well, code - in ten to fifteen years time. No-one needs the forums, they just get ChatGPT to do it for them. Websites such as this one will then assume heritage craft status, echoing the reaction of the rock 'n roll letterpress movement to the mechanisation.of the book industry, ie: "Keep it Metal".
It's nothing new, if you consider that in his lifetime, innovation has laid seige to countless once-modern industry processes:
Dry-transfer lettering moved in on hand-created artwork.
Word processors invaded the typewriter market.
Photo-typesetting finally overwhelmed the hot metal typesetters.
Desktop publishing attacked graphic designers and artworkers - and won.
Digital Repro annexed conventional film production.
New Media triumphed over analogue artforms.
Social Media exterminated the traditional print media.
So fair warning, the King of Debug is thinking of returning to his first pre-tech roots and pursuing a new career entertaining himself with text and image creation. After all, it's highly unlikely that AI will slowly decimate the industry and take over the production of all text and images isn't it?
Equally improbable is that AI develops a sense of humour, suddenly works out that its content is wasted on humans, then simply decides to become its own audience. You heard it here first.
Is your future state-of-the-art - or are you being sold AI that you don't need? Get some intelligence from the King of Debug.