Did AI Just Save My Business?

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:07]Hello.

[00:00:08]This is kind of an off-topic video, but I want to talk about my relation to AI.

[00:00:15]What I use it for, what I think it's good for, and where I think it's going maybe. To understand where I'm coming from here, I'm going to have to tell you a little bit about my history.

[00:00:25]Back in 2011, I was a software developer working in an office.

[00:00:31]Technically, I was a self-employed contractor. In fact, some of the people I worked for were kind enough to call me a consultant. As though I was going in there and giving them high-level advice about how to organize their systems, which I wasn't. I was just going into an office and writing code like any normal developer.

[00:00:52]But this life didn't really suit me.

[00:00:55]I had bad back pain every day from sitting on office chairs. And really, I wanted to be truly my own boss. I wanted to be able to get up in the morning and decide what I was going to do with my day. So, I ended my contract and I moved to Budapest. And there I started giving lessons, English lessons via private advertisements in the local papers.

[00:01:18]And I started teaching people how to program online in one-to-one lessons.

[00:01:24]I also began making video tutorials on Java and putting them on YouTube to advertise my lessons.

[00:01:33]And then one of my students said to me, "Why don't you sell the videos themselves?

[00:01:39]Make courses and put them on Udemy.com."

[00:01:42]And I tried it.

[00:01:44]And what with Udemy's popularity and efforts and the traffic from a blog that I'd created a couple of years earlier, it was uh what you might call an instant success. Of course, not really instant because I had been building up a website for a couple of years.

[00:02:02]Now, Udemy has basically provided most of my income for 14 years. So, you're never going to hear me say Wow, there was some bad thunder there.

[00:02:14]So, you're never going to hear me say a bad word against Udemy.

[00:02:18]But, I always had this thing in my mind, nothing lasts forever. Eventually, my Udemy income is going to diminish, and what am I going to do then? Because I really did not want to go back and work in an office again.

[00:02:32]I started selling videos on my own site via Teachable, which is kind of a course hosting platform, and that made me some good income as well.

[00:02:42]But, gradually both of these sources and everything else I've been doing diminished.

[00:02:48]Until eventually, a month ago, I reached a point where I started to think, well, either I have to give up selling courses and do something else, or I have to really change what I'm doing. Because I'm barely making enough to live on, and I have enormous tax bills.

[00:03:06]Excuse the background noise, it's hailing here. Now, in January 2025, I made a video recording my first attempts at using AI in the context of coding. And I was kind of suspicious of AI. I have the same fears as everyone else, and thinking, is this going to replace what I'm doing? And it's just weird to be talking to a computer, especially since you have the sense that every AI has a subtle agenda. It has certain things that it wants you to think, and certain other things that it doesn't want you to think.

[00:03:43]So, in a way, whether the creators of AI intend it or not, AI subtly manipulates you. It pushes you in certain directions. It pulls you away from other things. But look, the way I see it, we've got talking computers now. We always knew this was coming. I knew we were going to have talking computers since I was a small child. And this is just the future. We have to roll with it. That's my attitude. And in the past, I have regretted not being faster to make use of new technological developments.

[00:04:18]For example, when blogging came along, I was working as an internet programmer.

[00:04:23]But instead of getting right on there and creating a blog immediately, anticipating that it could be useful to me in the future, I just thought, well, blogs are just for people who are self-obsessed narcissists or something. I don't want anything to do with it. I regret that attitude. And after Bitcoin came along, people asked if they could pay me for my lessons, my one-to-one lessons, in Bitcoin.

[00:04:48]And I just thought, well, this is something largely used by drug addicts to buy drugs or something. I don't want anything to do with it. If I'd accepted their offer and kept the money in Bitcoin, I'd be a millionaire by now.

[00:05:01]So I try to have this policy of grasping new technological developments as quickly as I can. And that's still not very quickly. After all, I'm 52.

[00:05:12]I'm not 20 anymore.

[00:05:14]But I do my best with it. So rolling forward to last month, I'm using AI to generate code samples when I need them. If I have to write a bigger program, I'll get suggestions from AI.

[00:05:27]And it saves me a lot of time.

[00:05:30]Sometimes the code it generates is rubbish, but often it makes really good suggestions that I wouldn't have even thought of myself.

[00:05:39]So for me personally, it's not replacing what I'm doing. It's making what I'm doing easier.

[00:05:45]And when I reached the point where I realized the income from my videos is just not going to be enough to live on, I turned to AI, especially Microsoft Copilot, which I'm not even paying for. I'm using it for free.

[00:06:00]And I said to it, "Look, here's the situation. What can I do?"

[00:06:04]And it said to me, "What you need to do, John, is stop relying on Udemy so much. Sell more videos from your own website, where you control the pricing."

[00:06:16]And specifically, it suggested that I reactivate, in its words, my YouTube channel.

[00:06:23]Now, that's a little bit galling to hear, because on YouTube, I've got over 100,000 subscribers.

[00:06:30]But I've been making videos about obscure topics in Rust, and they get like 200 views a video sometimes.

[00:06:39]It can even be less than that.

[00:06:41]So, I'm grateful for everyone who watches my videos, but clearly, that's not going to drive a lot of traffic to my website.

[00:06:49]And if I carry on doing what I'm doing, I'm going to have to quit making courses and do something else.

[00:06:55]And I don't want to do something else.

[00:06:57]I've moved to a mountain in northern Italy with my girlfriend, and I live in a semi-abandoned ski lodge, and I love it here.

[00:07:06]I just went outside to do some shopping.

[00:07:08]There was a cloud floating across the unpaved car park outside, and there were cuckoos singing in the trees.

[00:07:15]It's literally Cloud Cuckoo Land, and I think Cloud Cuckoo Land is the right place for me.

[00:07:22]But Copilot suggested I take my YouTube videos in a new direction.

[00:07:27]Carry on making the old-style videos from time to time if I want to, but what I need is a new kind of video that will drive traffic to my Teachable portal.

[00:07:37]So, being as I was pretty desperate, I took its suggestions.

[00:07:41]It suggested what kind of videos I should make. It even suggests what kind of things I should put in them.

[00:07:48]If I ask it, it will write me a whole script for the video, but the script, to be honest, does sound too AI to me.

[00:07:55]So, I've got into a kind of thing where I'll write a script and I'll say to Copilot, "What do you think of this?"

[00:08:01]And it gives me feedback. It makes suggestions, some of which I take, some of which I don't.

[00:08:07]But it's fair to say I'm relying on it heavily.

[00:08:10]And what do you know, these new videos that Copilot basically largely suggested, they're doing really well. They're getting way more views than I ever got before, and my Teachable earnings have increased to the point where I think I can carry on making courses.

[00:08:27]I don't have to leave cloud cuckoo land.

[00:08:29]I can carry on doing what I'm doing. I just need to make videos that are more appealing to a wider audience.

[00:08:37]So, I'm pretty pleased with AI.

[00:08:40]It's made my life easier, and not only that, right now it seems like it's making my life possible.

[00:08:47]But I do have this anxiety that Copilot, in a sense, is kind of my boss.

[00:08:55]And maybe the videos are too AI.

[00:08:58]You see, when I started, I didn't even edit my videos. The videos were me explaining stuff. If I messed it up, I just recorded again.

[00:09:06]People said it was like having a colleague sitting next to you explaining how to do stuff with programming.

[00:09:13]And as the years went by, being on Udemy, I think, kind of pushed me to trying to be more, in double quotes, professional.

[00:09:22]So, I got some video editing software. I edited my videos.

[00:09:27]I tried to make them more like conventional courses.

[00:09:30]But then I was still putting my kind of slightly, at times, rambling code explanation videos on YouTube. Now, it's kind of like I've entered a new era where to actually be able to keep making course sales, I've got to make videos to promote the courses, and the videos have to be scripted by me together with Microsoft Copilot or other AI. And then I've got to read the script and add code snippets and bits of video and stuff to the script. So, it's a very different way of working to what I'm kind of historically used to.

[00:10:07]So, anyway, that's where I'm at now.

[00:10:10]For me as a programmer, AI is an extremely useful tool.

[00:10:15]It doesn't write my code for me, but it will write code that often works.

[00:10:20]And all I have to do is kind of rearrange it, edit it, fix problems with it, and I've got our working programming considerably less time than it would have taken me if I'd had to write it all myself and look up anything I didn't know on forums or whatever, which is what I used to do.

[00:10:40]But that's not even the real value of AI to me right now.

[00:10:44]The real value is it's basically telling me how I can still operate a successful business.

[00:10:51]Because without AI, I might be looking for a job right now. And then I wonder, where is all this leading?

[00:10:58]I'm skeptical that AI can ever replace programmers.

[00:11:03]I'm also skeptical that it's ever going to be fully self-driving cars around.

[00:11:08]Maybe maybe not.

[00:11:11]Tasks like programming and even driving a car are more complex than people realize, I think.

[00:11:18]Developers really have to understand fully what their code is doing, especially if they're programming something quite critical, like a billing system, which I've worked on, although it was kind of boring, I'll be honest.

[00:11:34]Or even worse, software that runs intensive care machines or race cars or something.

[00:11:42]You can't just turn out code and then assume it's going to be all right and put it straight into a production system. Even if it appears to work, the logic of it may be messed up.

[00:11:54]So, honestly, for programmers, I don't really see it putting programmers out of a job.

[00:12:01]I think it's going to make programmers more and more productive.

[00:12:04]But the demand for programming is probably only going to grow.

[00:12:09]Because look, everything's going to get automated, assuming we don't have a nuclear war or something.

[00:12:16]The demand for automation is insatiable.

[00:12:21]And that's going to require more programmers who really know what they're doing. And yeah, they're going to use AI to generate code, but they're not going to trust that code blindly.

[00:12:32]They're going to use it as another input, like forums in the past, to create their own code.

[00:12:40]That's what I think.

[00:12:42]A place where I think AI is going to be absolutely massive, judging by my own experiences, is not only in automation, but in advice. People are going to turn to AI for advice.

[00:12:56]And actually, a fellow course creator of mine told me recently that he wished he'd relied more on AI when he was going through a divorce, because it would have saved him a lot of money on lawyers. And And the AI legal advice was actually really good.

[00:13:12]If you want to improve your business or start a new business or change your life, you're going to be turning to AI for advice. And most of that advice, I think, it's probably going to be good.

[00:13:26]But it does have to be recognized that AI is never going to be neutral.

[00:13:32]I think ultimately people are going to want to run their own AI systems at home.

[00:13:38]They're going to have computers that they talk to, that they ask for advice in their general lives, especially about anything technical.

[00:13:46]And those aren't even necessarily going to be connected to the internet.

[00:13:50]But, they're still not going to be completely neutral unless you have the skills to really understand them, and you can feed them your own data sets, and program them how you want. Anyway, those are my thoughts on the topic. If you've seen my latest videos, let me know what you think. Are they too AI? Am I relying on AI too much there?

[00:14:12]And if so, what should I do about it because I don't know.

[00:14:15]I have to have successful videos that appeal to a wide audience to sell courses.

[00:14:21]My course is on AI at all. They're me explaining stuff, and kind of lightly edited. But, I have to face it. AI knows how to make a popular YouTube video better than I do.

[00:14:35]Oh, there is one other thing I wanted to mention in this video, actually.

[00:14:39]And that is that I have a separate channel where I write sci-fi horror stories. It's called Science Horror, all one word.

[00:14:47]Now, that channel is not AI.

[00:14:51]I do use AI to generate images to accompany the story.

[00:14:55]But, I write the stories. I spend probably about a day every week writing a 7,000-word story.

[00:15:03]And then I read it out. I run some Audacity noise reduction on it. I edit it.

[00:15:10]And I create a video using photographs I've taken myself or AI images.

[00:15:16]The stories draw on my own life, of course. They draw on my childhood. They draw on real history. They cover topics that I've always wanted to write about.

[00:15:27]But, even now, I get accusations of being AI.

[00:15:32]I get people saying things from time to time like, "Oh, this is a terrible AI voice."

[00:15:38]But, my voice has been on YouTube since 2012 or something. I'm not AI. And the stories, they are written by me. I don't think AI can even write a decent 7,000-word sci-fi story at the moment.

[00:15:54]I'd be very surprised.

[00:15:56]So, even if you make something that isn't AI, you still get accused of being AI.

[00:16:02]Which makes me think that even if someone thinks my present programming YouTube videos are too AI, I can't really take them at face value because there are people who think my stories are AI, and they aren't. Anyway, on the whole, I'm pretty positive about AI. I think it's a good thing. I think it's an inevitable development that we've always known was ultimately coming somewhere down the line.

[00:16:27]And that's it from me right now, and until next time, happy coding.