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I'm sorry, you'll probably find this is a really long article. From the title, you probably think I'm either about to about to profess the infinite...
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I disagree, I think it's the other way around. AI will get better at interpreting more business data and context and hallucinate more and more when writing large pieces of code.
AI mimics an artist, not an engineer. It will generate new output everytime, even if it's nonsense (hallucination). Good engineers, given the same input parameters, will produce the same output. I think the current LLMs fundamentally lack the capability to mimic the process that an engineer goes through when writing code.
Therefore I don't see AI evolving past a companion/assistant, that will greatly increase the speed at which we write code and help us figure things out faster (due to more direct access to context). I don't think it will ever be capable of writing good software (with predictable outcome) unassisted.
I don't even trust AI to kickstart a project. Sorry but this whole AI trend is just a bubble that's going to pop if people don't stop asking it to do everything. At best it's a content generator with a glorified chat interface. We are lying to ourselves thinking that it will be able to solve complex engineering problems. Only humans have that capability
What we need is an AI that can write instructions for your code. The problem is English language is either a barrier or lacks specifics. I once tried it to do a simple code with rectangles and circles inside it and constantly bouncing back and it was hard to tell it to position this or that and you have to tinker with the code. To use AI you need to write better English. You need to write a better code. This takes time and training to fix AI mistakes. However, I see that AI will be great if say we have context based AI. For example if you have excel data its analysis is just a click. I just analyzed a genetic data.
So for highly predictable softwares it is the way to go.
I think what you're suggesting is that if developers are not building products that people or businesses use, they won't have jobs anymore. But this holds for a majority of software developers. Are they all to become product managers or open source maintainers? How realistic is that?
It is all educated guesses.
People, learn to say "I don't know" when you don't really know. I think the future will surprise most of us.
Having jumped into AI I can say, with some certainty, that you're absolutely right about AI not going away.
The problem with hallucinations is declining and we are seeing improvements in the way we build models.
I think people who fall into the product owner role or something similar like business analyst will likely be in the best position to harness this technology. They are typically the ones who take on the role of transforming customer requirements into meaningful deliverables, and AI will even help them do that better.
One issue, however, is that many of the people who become developers are introverts. They don't like dealing with others and frequently the sentiment is mutual (hence product owners).
These folks likely make up a majority of the software engineers and yes, I think AI might very likely put them out of a job if they can't pivot effectively. Luckily, if they can leverage AI for interaction through email and chat messages, this might not be to horrible. AI can help them write in a way that better targets their audience and may help them communicate better. Face-to-face, however, may still be a challenge (luckily we have lots more millennials and gen-z entering the workforce who primarily communicate via electronics, so maybe that won't be a big problem).
One thing that does set AI apart from previous abstractions, however, is it's ability to work autonomously.
Sure, right now it lacks lots of information and context, etc, but we'll get to past that. As AI gets more feedback loops from the world around it, it's knowledge will improve. It's ability to recognize patterns that don't work will improve. It will be able to self improve and unlike human beings, it will be able to replicate that improvement to all related AI models simultaneously.
I think we're still a year or two away from it getting to be that self-sustaining, but we're really close.
Once it does, if you think the technology is moving fast now, just wait.
The singularity is here, or at least in the driveway.
Good news. I think things like UBI will become a necessity for society. I think a lot of the things we used to have to do will be gone. We're all going into early retirement, and finally, some of us will be young enough to really enjoy it.
I think the big paradigm shift here will end up being what society looks like after this shift. We all know the problems with communism and socialism, but AI may render many of those issues moot.
Why is it so important for people to work. The idea of them simply mooching off society will be meaningless.
And some people will say, well we need work to find meaning in our lives. I say, fine, work then. There will be nothing stopping you. If you like programming, then program. Now you'll be able to program what you want, the way you want to do it and it won't cost you your job if you don't do it exactly right. If you like to make things out of wood, knock yourself out. If you love looking at art, look at art.
But, you'll be able to do things that you never could before. You'll be able to make entire movies by yourself. In short order, those movies will be immersive. You'll be able to be in those movies and maybe even interact with people.
The skies the limit and if you're the only person who cares about it, it won't even matter (well, perhaps your self esteem will take a hit, but other than that).
I'm really excited about the possibilities.
Will there be some really bad stuff that comes along with all this. ... Puhleeeease, of course there will. And we only have the slightest idea of what some of those issues will look like. Some of the issues we are seeing now will become moot in time as well. For instance, there likely won't be as much value in stealing someone's life fortune, and the chance of you getting caught doing it will be higher.
At this point, I can only say, I'm so curious where this will all go. I'm usually pretty good at identifying trends and to some extent, predicting the future. AI has made this an extreme challenge for me. At this point I have a better idea of what's not likely to happen than what will. It looks likely to be a net positive after we finally make it through the initial transition that I'm certain will be chaos.
This article captures the essence of the AI-driven transformation in software development perfectly! The historical perspective on abstraction resonates—every shift has made programming more accessible while expanding what's possible. AI feels like the next logical step in this journey, but as you point out, it’s not just about writing code anymore. Developers who can deeply understand the business context, user needs, and system architecture will thrive.
I love the idea that AI isn’t just a tool but a collaborator. Do you think we’ll see new job roles emerge specifically for AI-guided development, or will traditional dev roles just evolve organically? Excited to hear your thoughts!
I agree. I think "Articulating solutions" has been the game all along. It's just that until now the process of getting that into the code was hopelessly clumsy and needed armies of coders herded by projectmanagerscrummastermiddlemanagers. Even with hallucinations it looks like lots of low hanging fruit to pick for those who adapt. Understanding the business and communicating well was always what mattered.
I think you give the best advice for existing coders to keep their jobs for the longest time possible. One very notable omission to this story though is that as AI improves it's going to lower the entry barrier to coding which means more competition with soft skills being more important than hard skills. Most coders aren't great a soft skills, so others will likely be able to outshine them. Increased competition from outside the traditional pool is going to cause salaries to decline. This effect will increase as the barriers lower until they eventually vanish entirely. In the end, coding will be not much different than going to Suno and telling it what song to make, anyone could do it.
On the bright side, this is the future of all jobs, so it's not just coders that are going to get the shaft. The bad news is that this means wage normalization to some degree across the board since pretty much anyone will be able to do any job (eventually). This also means the wealth gap will widen. When AI is able to fully replace humans then wages will go down even more as humans have to compete with AI and robotics for jobs. Tech only ever gets cheaper, faster, and more efficient, so this will happen year over year until salaries approach zero.
Obviously this isn't a sustainable model. Our economy works great in a world where human labor is necessary, but once we have sufficiently advanced AI it becomes a dystopian nightmare. Economists need to be coming up with better solutions for a post-labor economy that limits access to finite resources without incentivizing work since there will be so few jobs that the few that exist could be done by those with a passion for it.
Excellent insights. AI gives me hopes as someone who is a non-techie, making possible opportunities that I would have otherwise struggled with. Fear or face AI - I'm facing and embracing it.
Great treatise on AI. Thanks 🙏
You are spot on. AI is here to stay. Learn to adapt or get left behind. Start now and grow with AI instead of trying to catch up down the road.
It's here to stay if users use it.. it learns and evolves through interactions, to slowly become what users can do and replace them, it'll not be limited to coding added with robotics, it'll be able to all jobs.. that's why the nobel prize winners and creators of neural networks expressed the thought they themselves put humanity in danger.
Well the next language will be ai agents programming them selves with human in the loop