What does the success of modern hackers such as Paul Graham say about our present society and its future? Should our society and culture encourage risk-taking and starting businesses? What is the next big thing?

The current big thing is artificial intelligence (AI), mainly generative AI. I am looking to buy a new laptop soon, maybe around Black Friday or Cyber Monday, and there are so many laptops marketed as “AI-ready” with dedicated hardware components specifically for AI tasks. AI is becoming integrated with the operating system; Copilot is integrated with Windows 11. Google Pixel phones are more or less Gemini phones and come with NPUs dedicated for AI computations. The laptops I am looking at are being marketed as AI chips with NPUs as well. It’s all very strange and icky for me. AI feels pretty invasive of my privacy, and I never loved Cortana or Siri. I am fine with asking ChatGPT some questions when I decide to do so, but being forced to have an annoying AI companion is frustrating especially because it gets in the way or what I’m trying to do most of the time.

And honestly, the only reason laptop and CPU manufacturers are raving about their AI-ready products is because it’s marketable to the masses. “You use ChatGPT, right? Imagine what you could do with our AI chip.” And what’s annoying is that the majority of people will be oblivious or indifferent about the data that’s being collected from them.

If AI is the current “thing”, then what’ll be the next big thing? I actually had a conversation with a friend recently about this exact question. They thought extended reality would be the next big thing. I thought quantum computing might be it. It’s impossible to know for sure.

I never did computer science for the money. I didn’t know how much software engineers made on average until later into college. It didn’t matter to me because I knew computer science was fun for me, and I knew it would be an important skill for the future. I believed I would always be relevant because of my expertise. Ironically, it seems like it’s a bit more complicated than that.

Nowadays, startups can be found everywhere. There are so many startups and the competition is as high as ever. I think it’s great that people are going for it and taking the risk as long as they understand the situation they’re putting themselves in. I think many startups today are great, but I also think there are a lot of startups that exist for the purpose of making a quick buck. They pretend to solve a problem professionally, but often they are just putting on a mask to make a profit. It is what it is.