Posted: March 1, 2024 | | Categories: Artificial Intelligence

Many years ago I authored my last book. It was 2020, and the book came out right at the beginning, or near the beginning, of the Global Pandemic. The book was my first book published in color and it was short and right on point for the selected topic. I thought it was a really good book, but, sadly, it didn't sell.

Its possible that everyone was busy dealing with staying home and didn't buy any books, but I'm not sure that I believe that. I think the book released at a time when readers transitioned from reading books to watching video courses. At the time too, with everyone staying home, a lot of writers like me started using their spare time to publish technical articles on a variety of topics. Learners could find almost anything online and books were just not part of it apparently.

Another reason for limited book publishing was that technology advanced so quickly that there was limited opportunity to publish a useful book on a topic before the book quickly becomes obsolete. With my publisher, I wrote several books in less time that it took them to actually publish the book. With my work on the Apache Cordova series, major versions started coming out more rapidly than any book author or audience could keep up.

Appropriately, my publisher transitioned to online courses and videos. Every book topic I proposed was shut down by the publisher; I desperately wanted to write a book on Flutter, but even though Flutter was very popular (I LOVE working in Flutter even though I Don't Know Dart), nobody wanted a book on it.

Fast forward to today and, as I expect, most of us are somehow involved in AI. If the pace of technology 4 years ago was fast, I can't even think of how to quantify the pace of AI Advancement against it. it has to be 10 or 100 times faster.

I'm working with a team building a Generative AI (GenAI) based service in OCI and there were a very simple set of capabilities planned for the initial release. However, with the advancement in all the AI-based tooling in use, the team had to stop development and refactor their plans so that when they shipped the product offering would be relevant. With this refactor and just a couple of extra months, they will be able to deliver a much more robust set of features. The roadmaps for these types of products are big, but none of them are stable because the available capabilities change (grow, enhance) way too rapidly.

Its an exciting but also scary time to be in the space, but I honestly don't know how I'll be able to keep up and still do my day job.

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