Before We Begin

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has upended the software industry in a very short space of time — a digital industrial revolution, happening on a highly compressed timescale. For those outside the industry, it is hard to imagine just how much has changed, and is still changing. In barely any time at all, we’ve moved from code being a human-crafted artifact to a point where, in many organisations, it is now almost entirely written by AI. The impact of this change is far-reaching, and much like the industrial revolution, the human impact is considerable.

Much of the industry narrative focusses on the tools, the AI, the harnesses, and their ever-growing capabilities. However, we need to spend just as much, if not more time discussing the impact this is having on us. Humans will still be a significant part of the software engineering ‘system’, and many of us are rapidly trying to determine what our role will ultimately be.

Storytelling is a great medium for communicating and understanding change. That’s why I really enjoy books like The Phoenix Project — a vehicle for helping people understand the DevOps transformation from a human perspective.

This story is very much inspired by The Phoenix Project: a near-future account of the impact AI has on an organisation deep in the pursuit of speed, ignoring the risks and the human impact.

Disclaimer: This story was written with the help of AI. While I can write a decent technical blog post, there is no hope for me when it comes to works of fiction! I have not tried to disguise the AI writing, and I have not suppressed the em dashes — although I did remove one use of the term “load-bearing”! If you consider an AI-authored tale to be worthless slop, I totally understand. I was simply using AI as a tool to help me tell a story that I think needs telling.

— Colin Eberhardt