There’s a new generation in charge, and it’s not the Zoomers, or Gen-Z. Oh sure, the tech revolution was spawned by Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers like Bill Gates and Elon Musk, but it was the Millennials who really supercharged it with AI and the metaverse.

Now the Millennials (Gen-Y) are decidedly middle aged, and in the tech world, that’s over the hill. Zoomers, despite being the biggest percentage of the global population, are pushing 40 and still addicted to online gaming, YouTube and Google.

Generation Alpha have been calling themselves Gen.AI (note the period) and they were at school when ChatGPT arrived on the scene. So much so, that this generation can’t function without AI. They’re totally dependent on it.

Which makes them hugely productive. Having billions of prompt engineers, AI wranglers, and generative pre-trainers is pretty useful – as long as the systems stay on the exponential upward curve. It seems that there’s no industry in the world that hasn’t benefitted from ‘modern’ AI, and Gen.AI are the crowd in charge.

But here’s the thing – the whiz kids of today have virtually never had to figure things out for themselves. They’ve never had to learn by trial and (mainly) error, feel the hard slog of real knowledge gained from experience, and use curiosity to constantly explore the unknown. Because AI knows everything.

“That’s the problem with the youth of today,” laments a retired professor. “They’re incapable of original thought. They only know how to manipulate the machines into giving them the ‘best’ answers!”

For companies looking to hire these bright young minds it’s even worse. For real innovation and inventiveness, you need to break the mold and think differently, not follow best practice. You can’t do that when you’re relying on pre-trained models, no matter how massive they are.

Which ultimately begs the question: Are humans using the computers, or are computers using the humans?