For Elliott, AI is an obvious tool
Elliott Enarsson Dury is a self-taught programmer, which led to a job after his internship at Icomera. For him, AI is an obvious tool at work. – But there is a risk that you replace yourself.
Already as a twelve-year-old, Elliott Enarsson Dury, now 19, was programming at home in Kungälv, outside Gothenburg. Irrigation systems, own websites, JA companies. No one in the family was a trained engineer, so Elliott taught himself.
At Icomera in Gothenburg, which develops solutions for connectivity in public transport, Elliott got to work with passenger counting, user interfaces and databases. Here, his knowledge of programming and his curiosity about AI have really developed.
Among other things, he developed an AI agent that can read from the company's database and allow users to ask questions, filter and aggregate data in a secure, sandboxed environment. The team also built an internal code reviewer that read through and commented on their code automatically.
"My colleagues thought that was really exciting," says Elliott.
Risk of substituting oneself
But Elliott is also the first to say that AI is not a shortcut. As a self-taught programmer, he could have asked his supervisor every time he got stuck, but instead he used AI to twist and turn concepts until he understood them from all sides. It is important, he says, not to let the tool solve the problem, but to use it to actually understand.
"You don't have to understand everything very thoroughly, but you do have to understand what it does – so that you can direct it towards specific problems.
He reads through everything the AI writes for him, every time, to learn from it and avoid having to ask the same question again.
The risk with AI-generated code is that you work without keeping up with the reasoning and lose context, and then you can no longer understand your own work.
"Then you've kind of replaced yourself too," Elliott states matter-of-factly.
Best idea wins
What surprised him the most about working at Icomera was perhaps not the technical aspect, but the social aspect of working in an office environment. Going from high school to sitting in a real office, having lunch with colleagues and daring to take a place in a team of experienced developers is a transition that is not visible on any CV but which he describes as one of the most important things he takes with him. At Icomera, Elliott quickly became confident enough to raise his own ideas. Much thanks to the team's approach to problem-solving.
"It doesn't matter so much if the idea comes from me or from someone else. The best idea wins. You raise an idea and everyone evaluates it. For a nineteen-year-old in his first real job, it's not obvious – but here it really was.
The internship turned into employment and Gothenburg became Stockholm. In the autumn, Elliott will start Industrial Economics at KTH. His advice to whoever takes over the Icomera stick after him is brief.
"It's okay to fail, that's how you learn.