Putting you at ease: Piquant and AI
As someone who works in tech, the first thing strangers ask when they find out what I do is ‘are you worried about AI taking your job’. When this first started happening, I wasn’t too worried. But as AI has evolved and become more mainstream, I’ll admit that the feeling of apprehension about not being needed any more started to creep in.
But as the old adage says, 'Knowledge is power’. With that in mind, I started looking further into AI and what its capabilities are and what it can provide. But more than that, I started to explore what it couldn’t provide. The areas that AI can’t reach but Piquant excels in.
Translation: ‘Tech talk’ and your needs
Sometimes listening to people in tech have a conversation is like listening to a completely different language. And the truth is, it is! Code has its own terminology; from specific coding languages to frameworks to database configuration, it’s a language that you only really learn from doing.
But why does this matter?
Having worked with AI to see what it’s able to generate on command, I have noticed that you need to be specific in what you ask for. However intelligent it is, AI is still just a machine and does not have the cognitive ability to understand vague suggestions, or understand when a term is being used incorrectly. This is where communication becomes key. Sometimes you can articulate what you’re trying to achieve, sometimes you rely on hand gestures to convey information - all of these are communication styles that AI can’t understand. But we can. Part of the Piquant process is to listen to what you need, listen to how you describe how it should function and translate that into the correct terminology.
AI gives you what you ask for, Piquant understands what you need.
Maintainable & scalable code
At Piquant, we pride ourselves on creating maintainable code. You should be able to revisit a project after a year and be able to pick back up where you left off. Another developer should be able to open your code and be able to understand what is happening and why that specific approach was taken.
We also ensure that our code is scalable. Code should provide a good foundation that can be added to, allowing functionality to grow as our clients' needs grow.
AI will absolutely be able to generate a piece of code that will work to do exactly what you need it to at the time. But what about the future? Will that singular code snippet be robust enough to make changes over time? From what I’ve seen so far, it’s highly unlikely. While the generated code works well (with a few tweaks!) straight ‘out of the box’, the real artistry in what we do comes from considering where it can go and how it can evolve.
AI delivers code for the now, Piquant delivers code for the future.
The personal touch
Having someone be happy with you and your work is a great feeling. Humans thrive on positive reinforcement to know that we’re heading in the right direction. At Piquant, knowing that we’re creating work that our clients appreciate is something that drives us. So when feedback is sent in, it’s shared among the team. It feels great in the moment to know that what we do is appreciated.
But when we looked back at all of the feedback together, something that's noticeable is the language that’s used. While the client does reference the great deliverable, something that is usually spoken about is the experience they had with the team; how the team made them feel, how the team listened to what the client needed, how the team assured them at certain points in the process. The human interaction through the journey is what stood out to our clients.
AI generates deliverables, Piquant creates an experience.
Final thoughts
The role of AI shouldn’t be completely dismissed. It can be a great starting point for innovation across many sectors; from automating tasks to paraphrasing long documents, it has its place.
But what Piquant brings to the table is more than a final product. It’s a series of human centered moments that culminate in a great experience for both us and our clients.
