With AI, the purpose of a software engineer or filmmaker doesn’t change, but their tasks do. A software engineer still needs to understand the software stack, and a filmmaker still needs to understand storytelling and how video, sound, and editing work together toward their goal. Photography in the 20th century involved film, darkrooms, and using enlargers to project a negative onto photographic paper. Today, creative photography is digital, but the artist still needs to understand lighting, framing, and composition.
Knowledge is information applied to a domain
AI has taken us from managing information to managing knowledge so AI agents can find, act on, and automate effectively. Knowledge graph engineering is becoming increasingly important for teams working with AI agents. But to be successful, you still need to understand the fundamentals of the domain you’re working in.
Commands vs Orders
In software development, the command line is where commands are executed. Commands are deterministic since they follow very specific steps of execution. Commands like cd, mkdir, ls, dir, etc follow explicitly defined instructions, producing predictable behavior based on their inputs and the system's current state.
However, with AI agents, there’s a shift from commands to orders.
In the military, commands are given such as right face, left face, about face, etc. Troops don’t simply turn around when they hear “About face.” Rather, there’s a very specific way to execute this command: “c-lock straight, and easy about,” in other words, without bending your knee, draw a backwards C with your toes and then ease about 180° on the ball and heel of your feet.
Orders, on the other hand, are subjective when it comes to execution. A lieutenant may order a sergeant to clean the barracks, but the lieutenant doesn’t tell the sergeant how to do it, or in what sequence. Instead, it’s up to the sergeant to figure it out. The sergeant could decide to have one squad clean the squad bay while the other squad cleans the head/latrine (bathroom). Or perhaps the sergeant may have the entire platoon clean one of these areas before moving to the next area. That’s the difference between a command and an order; the command is deterministic and the order isn’t, allowing flexible execution.
The most important step for the lieutenant is to supervise the outcome. Inspect what you expect. Supervision is drilled into military leaders as the most important troop-leading step. The same applies with AI for software engineering since it now enables massive automation. But you still need to know what’s going on. Instead of having to manually execute 100 steps to get from point A to point B, you can automate the first 50 steps, check in (supervise) and then automate the next 50 steps.
How to "do" AI?
Transitioning to an AI world is intimidating. When you’re first trying it out, simply state your motivation and goal. “I am a logistics SME at a transportation company. I need to convert some code from R to TypeScript. My company owns the code that we wrote for a military client… What do you recommend as the plan to do this? Give me two or three options in a spreadsheet with these specific column headings...”
AI agents are very patient and they will be kind to you. Just ask.
