In the last few years I have come to think of AI as transformative in the same way as relational databases. Yes, right now there's a lot of fad noise around AI.

In the last few years I have come to think of AI as transformative in the same way as relational databases. Yes, right now there's a lot of fad noise around AI. That will fade. And not everyone in IT will be swimming in AI. Just like not everyone today is neck deep in databases. But databases are still pretty fundamental to a lot of occupations. Front-end web devs might not write SQL all day, but they probably won't get very far without some comprehension. I see AI/ML becoming something as common. Maybe you need to know some outline of what gradient descent is. Maybe you just need some understanding of prompt engineering. But a reasonable grasp of the priciples is still going to be useful to a lot of people after all the hype moves to other topics.