51
B C B U S I N E S S . C A
M A R C H 2 0 2 5 O p p o s i t e p a g e : t o p l e f t : J u J a e - y o u n g / S h u t t e r s t o c k ; A n d r e w P a r k : U V i c P h o t o S e r v i c e s
that everyone knows about, and then your
image models, but then there's a whole
constellation of different AI models that
try to achieve different things," he explains.
Large language models, or LLMs, are
trained on enormous amounts of language
data to converse in human-like ways. You
can ask ChatGPT: "Give me a seven-day
itinerary for the Amalfi Coast in April,"
and it will suggest how to spend a week in
Positano, Capri and Sorrento. But that wiz-
ardry and the publicity surrounding it over-
shadows the business applications of LLMs
like ChatGPT and competitors like Google
Gemini or Anthropic's Claude.
Park points out that LLMs can work on
any kind of written text, including software
code. "Claude has become so sophisticated
in software development now that you can
just give it some natural language instruc-
tion and say, 'Build me a skeleton of a very
basic Twitter competitor,' and it'll give you
two to three hundred lines of code. And
then you can go in there and start tweak-
ing it as you see fit."
Indeed, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai
announced in his company's third-quar-
ter 2024 earnings call that "more than a
quarter of all new code at Google is gen-
erated by AI, then reviewed and accepted
by engineers."
"People don't realize that these LLMs
are very specifically disrupting profes-
sions and categories of professions," Park
emphasizes. "People aren't just using them
to, for example, help them with a home-
work assignment or write marketing mate-
rial or a strategy plan."
Software engineer Wilson Scott is focus-
ing on his own skills while LLMs move into
his industry. He left his law practice in 2021
to earn a computer systems technology
diploma at BCIT, enrolling in its artificial
intelligence and machine learning option.
He graduated in 2023 and works as a soft-
ware engineer at Vancouver-based 3D-scan-
ning company Polyga Inc.
Scott's company doesn't stop him from
asking Claude or other LLMs to write or aug-
ment his code, but he makes a concerted
effort not to use them. He wants to use
the practice time. "This is a second career
for me, but I am a junior," he explains.
"I'm learning about every facet of being a
software engineer and I'd like to be doing
that firsthand."
He thinks he might eventually use AI
tools to augment his work and automate
some tasks, but only after he's built a
deeper understanding of his profession.
Scott describes how his BCIT education
helped him understand how the artificial
intelligence models work, and to see their
limitations: "In terms of AI coming for our
jobs? I'm not concerned about that, at least
not yet."
Researcher Aaron Hunter, who is the
Mastercard Chair in Digital Trust at BCIT,
argues that powerful, productive AI tools
will change the nature of digital work—
but he's optimistic for employment in
the sector.
"Maybe there you don't need as many
of the software developers doing the same
tasks that they were doing before," he
explains. "But, overall, we're still predict-
ing growth in the industry, because all of
these AI tools still need people to work on
them, manage them and develop them."
+1-250-472-4036
www.uvic.ca/gustavson/executive lmfitter@uvic.ca
