Lifestyle AI

AI Presence

AI Presence: Public Domain

Many readers of this article will be Program Managers of technical development within corporations. Among AI providers, work may be on platforms for hardware support of AI, or platforms for delivering AI software infrastructure to be invoked by applications and ultimately for customers. Those working on these platforms are already familiar with LLM, GenAI and specifics of AI technologies and may use AI to create or review code or to produce other elements. They are familiar with AI concepts and comfortable using AI in many aspects of their lifestyle. This population is common in my neighborhood but are a tiny minority of people who are currently, or will be, directly affected by AI.

Many more people, both in Program Management and in the general Public Domain, are not developing AI or technical products, but have AI involvement anyway through personal experimentation in work environments, and by use of products invisibly incorporating AI. This includes AI notes from online meetings, use of Search Engines, creation and enhancement of analysis, documents, images. Some may have technical involvement in areas that include data analysis or other technologies, and can use AI directly for problem solving in those.

The broadest set of people in the Public Domain interact with AI implicitly through search engines, and use of AI within facilities provided by corporations with whom they interact. This might include shopping, advertising, financial, and social media both invisibly and via prompts given directly to provided AI facilities. Many are using AI directly; but as of now even more are not… yet.

AI Presence: Corporate Domain

Corporations are actively pursuing active development of AI facilities, using AI technologies within software relevant to their businesses (shopping, advertising, financial, technical, process management).

Corporate budgets for development and use of AI are astronomical, amounting to over $300B in 2025. Announced so far for spending this year CY2025: Amazon: $100B; Microsoft: $80B; Alphabet: $75B; Meta: $65B. OpenAI (providers of ChatGPT) and Softbank have jointly announced $500B investment in development of data centers and power generation facilities to support them, two of five proposed already in construction in Texas.

I note that as silicon develops, a handful of years from now new silicon will be in demand to enhance and expand facilities put into place now, due to Moore's Law or equivalent physics re silicon geometry vs. cost. So both incremental plus ongoing replacement of existing capacity will require funding going forward.

It is perceived that going into the future, use of AI will be massive, on par with use the Internet over the past several decades. Companies are investing to participate in that market now, but also to be positioned to compete going forward.

Notably, currently no provider of AI use shows a positive return. Some efforts are offered free and some require a subscription fee; but corporate spending massively outpaces return. AI is being developed in similar fashion to development of the Internet: "Volume First, Revenue Later". This has historically, repeatedly, manifested as production of winners of prevalent product; small players; and losers. Historically again, this has sometimes resulted in investment bubble and crash.

AI Presence: Conclusions

AI will have transformative effect on many jobs, and may replace some others. Jobs that handle data repetitively, updating and reporting, could likely be transformed or replaced. Jobs requiring creativity or interaction are less likely to be affected directly, at least not as early. Efficiency and cost-effectiveness would be the most likely motivators to affect jobs. New jobs will likely be created for development and management of AI, and facilities for providing it: creating and managing chips, data centers, power generation and new technologies and facilities for each. New jobs may be created to incorporate AI into products used by customers.

Investment in development and provision of AI will become stiffer competition for funding against all corporate activity, and many companies will face a crunch between AI funding vs. funding of current operation. I would expect current product offerings to be sifted and culled favoring demand for AI creation or incorporation and its consequent infrastructure. That probably results in demand for new skills, and changes to some current jobs.

It can also be expected that AI will permeate all aspects of our lives, much as the Internet has already permeated them. The Internet has deeply changed our societies and facilities in ways we could not have foreseen. I expect the same will be true of AI so watch the events described in the "Patterns" section just below.

So if you want to know if AI will affect you, or affect your job, the answer is unequivocally YES. We just can't yet conceive of HOW.

Pattern: Development of the Internet

Internet: Early Development

Development of the Internet gives clues on how development of AI will proceed and how it will affect the public. Development and rise of the Internet was a very technical and very large undertaking. But the overall effect on both technology and social behaviors was enormous.

Internet development got going in the mid 1990's resulting from ARPANET, a joint development among the US Defense Department, Digital Equipment Corporation, and Xerox Corporation. ARPANET implemented Ethernet, TCP-IP and Packet Switching technologies. Many other institutions and people, many now famous, were involved in this historical effort. This short summary is inadequate to describe all the efforts and involvements; I'm describing it in limited form to only give a flavor of development of the Internet as an example of current AI technology development and commercial deployment and use. I'm describing this history as I came to understand it, and hope I am offending as few people as possible on inclusion and credit. I've linked a number of references which give much fuller background…

Development of HTML by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN developed usage for publicly-networked computers and datasets. Somewhat later, development of Linux kernel by Linus Torvalds as an open-source operating system, and Ethernet switching by Kalpana, Inc. enabled ubiquitous distributed use by both private and commercial applications. As Internet expanded into commercial use, IETF attracted LAN technologies with community-coordinated protocols for broad commercial use.

Corporations became able to create a presence for access to data and corporate facilities among in-house computers, and then including access by customer PCs and Macintosh computers.

It seemed at the time that this would provide corporations and individual consumers with access to vast amounts of data from institutional databases. Farther out thought included provision of voice services. This was obviously interesting to phone companies who were early-on providers of physical interconnect among local LAN networks necessary for broad use of the new Internet. Those telephone networks had recently suffered US Department of Justice breakup of monopoly in the United States in 1982. MCI, now Verizon, provided much of the early broad connectivity for Internet distributed access. Early access was over 56Kb modems, with corporate connectivity via DSL and T1.

Many Venture Capital presentations included sketches of computer displays including an attached telephone handset. Little did we know what would come…

Internet: Explosion

With ongoing hectic development of the Internet, Amazon emerged, providing realistic broad commercial commerce especially as they developed broad physical product delivery, competitive with local brick-and-mortar outlets. Brick and Mortar stores had to develop means to compete with online commerce, resulting in most developing a similar or partnered online presence, and many folding. I still mourn Bookstores and Record Stores… Although I love media streaming so maybe we're even…

Commercial potential for the Internet led to broad deployment, "Volume first, Revenue later" and consequent investment by corporations, financial institutions, and the general public. This led ultimately to the Dot-Com Bubble and consequent Dot-Com Crash in 2000, leading to failure of many network equipment and service providers, and online commerce companies as well as broad layoffs.

Other companies consolidated and some gained significant market share with product dominance in their markets. From there, whole new markets emerged. Social Media burst on the scene with FaceTime, Facebook, Twitter/X, dating apps and much more. Music and then video streamers arrived and became dominant providers. The collection of socially-oriented Internet capabilities vastly changed social communications and behaviors.

Mobile phones and then Smart Phones emerged with iPhone in 2007, providing connectivity to the full Internet with emphasis on mobile communication connectivity and Social Media. Smart Phone units and connectivity are provided by evolved phone companies, replacing substantial numbers of land lines. By 2020, 75% of the world population used Smart Phones. Their connection to Social Media coupled with mobility have driven substantial social behaviors.

Whole new opportunities for criminal activity emerged: Online financial scam, identity theft, phishing, hacking. Security has also evolved, and among other things enabling crypto currency.

Arguably, although I presented this as an analogy to what we may expect from AI, the Internet has itself enabled the rise of AI via physical technologies, consumer and corporate application, and demonstration of commercial potential of technology products.

Internet: Conclusions

The Internet, and derived businesses and their evolution to online commerce, social media, and mobility have presented commercial opportunity and social change wildly beyond imagination from when Internet development began in the 90's and change, if anything, has accelerated ever since.

So I presented this Internet history as analogy to what we may expect as AI is ubiquitously adopted. Consequences are far from predictable and result in both positive and negative opportunities. In this, it is similar to many other past happenings. The differences are in scale and speed of change, both of which are likely to be enormous.

This all implies that we will all be affected by AI either directly or indirectly. The extent and speed of change means we cannot predict detail of how we will be affected. Instead we must adopt a personal strategy: Stay relevant, stay aware, stay adaptable. Act with both defensive intent, and proactive intent.

A particular element of such a strategy follows.

Proactive and Defensive Personal AI

Personal AI: State of Employment

As of writing of this Article, there are 7.6 million job openings in the United States with 5.5 million hires in the preceding December.

Nevertheless, it is all over LinkedIn that individuals may be unemployed for a year or more. Many have submitted their resume to hundreds of posted openings, only to be ghosted (no response at all) from all but a handful of companies, and resulting in perhaps a couple of phone interviews and no job offer and maybe no follow-up at all.

Probably there are several reasons for this. Jobs may be posted in hope that they may be hired but the company may wait for improved outlook before they will hire. Requirements may be set unreasonably high for even entry jobs. Ageism is alive and well: applicants with long experience may be routinely ignored regardless of qualifications.

Personal AI: A Cause – Software Screeners

One more hurdle also stands out: many, maybe most, resumes are screened by software before they are made available to hiring managers in the company. Screening criteria seem to be opaque both inside and outside of companies.

I will say this: personal contacts are the best way to get consideration in a company. Your contacts who would be willing to recommend you are one of the most valuable assets that could result from a job. But such contacts are typically good for a handful of years; peoples' association with companies may not be visible; and potential opportunities may arise in companies for which you have no contact. So when you are in a position, you must work on visibility and work on gaining contacts. Nevertheless, you must recognize that there are some limitations.

Personal AI: Use AI against AI

So how else might you bypass the software screen? Also on LinkedIn, a series of articles have recently emerged that intrigue me: Use AI.

These are from Tulsi Soni in her article on ChapGPT Prompts for Job Search.

• Optimize your resume: Help me create a [position]-specific resume by highlighting my skills in [industry/skill set]
• Match skills:
• Write your cover letter:
• Prepare you for an interview: Generate a list of common interview questions for a [position] at [company] and suggest strong answers based on my experience in [related field]
• Reach out for referrals:
• Analyze a job description: Analyze this job description [paste job description] and suggest key skills I should highlight in my application for [position]
• Improve your LinkedIn profile:
• Negotiate salary:
• Create your personal brand:
• Determine skills and certification that may help:

I put a couple into the list above, but her material should come from her own article, linked above so please visit that link. I note that LinkedIn tends to drop posts after some arbitrary time period so if her article gets dropped please contact me and I'll provide some replacement prompts.

As a rule, it's best not to just copy and use directly the AI response. It's recommended to use the AI response as inspiration to be checked and updated as appropriate in your own words. Same for any result from AI including images.

The best yet I've seen is to feed both the Job Description and your resume into an AI agent (ChatGPT) and ask the agent to draft your resume to match the JD.

These methods are beautiful. Using AI to defeat AI is truly Poetic Justice.

Tulsi used the above ChatGPT Prompts within the following methodology:

• Targeted recently-posted openings based on Posting Date.
• Focused on local onsite and hybrid roles, for smaller candidate pools.
• Copy and paste both the Job Description and your Resume into the AI agent, and ask it to help optimize and tailor the resume to match the job description. See Charlie Hills link below on how to upload.
• Apply through the company website.

Here are some more articles and links useful for Job Search:

• Charlie Hills: also has many useful posts for using AI particularly for job search.
  • Upload and analyze resume or job description
  • LinkedIn Landing Page
• From Sanchit Shangari:
  • LinkedIn Profile optimization
• From Matt Village:
  • Frameworks for AI Prompts
• From Ajit Kumar:
  • Prompts for development of your collateral
• From Chris Gallagher:
  • Methodology for Effective Prompts
• From Daniel Lee:
  • Popular AI Frameworks for 2025
• More From Tulsi Soni:
  • Remote Job Websites
• More From Amit Verma:
  • ChatGPT Prompts for Job Search

Lifestyle AI: Conclusions

AI is going to affect you. It will affect you directly if you employ a defensive/proactive strategy, and indirectly no matter what you do. You can probably be more competitive if you act proactively.

We can't really imagine what the effects will be. Job skill changes; job changes; company winners and losers; new technologies, new companies, new industries…

Defensive strategy: Stay relevant by seeking and learning how to use AI in problems you've learned that AI can help.

Proactive strategy: Use AI wherever you can. Learn and actively practice methods. Don't plagiarize: That's not learning, it's avoidance of learning.

Be visible on accomplishments in any position, and gain contacts who would be willing to refer or reference you in later situations.

Further Reading: Core Program Quantitative Structure for System Programs

Credits
Image(s) used under license from Shutterstock.com. Attribution: Bojan Milinkov / Shutterstock.com
My website: www.softtoyssoftware.com
Copyright © 2025 Richard M. Bixler
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