Let’s assume that in 10 years, AI has advanced absurdly, insanely fast, and is now capable of doing everything a Senior SWE can do. It can program in 15 different languages, 95% accuracy with almost no mistakes, can create entire applications in minutes, and no more engineers or SWEs are needed… What will all the devs do? Do they just become homeless? Transition to medical field, nursing? Become tradespeople like plumbers, HVAC?
Finally free from the Golden Handcuffs, I’d use my extra time to do something I’ve always wanted, like music production, which would also inevitably be taken over by AI.
They’re probably gonna laugh at the absurdity of the situation because some new popular language will come along and the AI will be back to pushing out broken code. That, or laugh because the code in well used languages will include a shit ton of vulnerabilities that wouldn’t be present if real devs had to double check code before pushing it out to the public.
back
When did it ever not push out broken code?
In this hypothetical situation?
In this hypothetical, why would we create new languages? What benefit does that have for AI-gen code?
So either we’re going to improve AI-gen to the point where we rely on it, or human devs are still important in which case new languages matter. The main exception here are languages specifically designed for AI, in which case error-rate would go down.
So either AI pushes out broken code and human devs are still important, or AI doesn’t push out broken code and new languages aren’t valuable.
Someone still has to write the instructions. AI might not become a replacement for the engineer, but a more powerful compiler, that is still fed with code written by engineers.
Yeah, I agree that’s the more likely scenario. People seem to worry way too much about AI, when it’s really only going to replace junior devs, and only for short-sighted companies.
But I mean many people have already lost their job because AI automated it away.
True, and many people have lost jobs because something else automated it away, like toll booth workers, grocery clerks, and telephone switchers, and computers (i.e. people who would compute things by hand).
Jobs disappearing because technology advances is natural. It sucks for those impacted, but it’s natural, and IMO it’s only a problem of new jobs aren’t created fast enough, or whole industries disappear. Fighting to keep jobs in spite of automation runs the risk of having an entire industry disappear, such as if dock workers win the fight to prevent automation on the docks, they’ll just all lose their jobs at the same time once automation can replace them all at once.
The better plan is to adjust and adapt as technology changes. If you’re entering CS or a recent grad, make sure you understand concepts and focus less on syntax. If you’re a mid level, learn to incorporate AI into your workflow to improve productivity. If you’re a senior, work toward becoming an architect and understand how to mitigate risks with poor quality code.
Fighting AI will at best delay things.
I think both can happen at the same time. There’s a lot of fkn nerds out there. (I’m a software developer myself)
They’re going to keep doing their job, good luck to some manager who thinks they can be verbose enough to get their idea across
Fixing broken software some robot pushed to prod
Same thing the rest of us replaced by AI are gonna do: live on the dole or starve
That will never happen, or at least with how ai currently works. It’s basically a glorified autocorrect, it uses the same technology underneath.
But presuming it does, yes. We will have to go to another industry, like AI prompting. Coding is a tiny part of professional software development.
Yes, exactly this.
When compilers came along, some people honestly thought it would dumb down programming so much that anyone could do it.
When high level programming languages came along, they rejoiced again - now finally anyone can make software.
When Intellisense meat you no longer had to remember variable names, write your own imports and could guess how most libraries work, the bells rang out once again in celebration.
And now we have AI, it’s cool but really just another step like all those steps before. For me, it’s a replacement for the documentation I never read anyway. I can ask an AI a stupid question rather than bothering a human developer.
These days it’s my job to manage a small team of developers - when I ask them why they wrote a stupid thing that makes no sense, 90% of the time, the answer is that an AI wrote it for them.
It’s basically a glorified autocorrect, it uses the same technology underneath.
I dislike AI too but this is just ridiculous if you think that’s true. Lots of my colleagues in SWE use full blown AI development tools. I even used Claude AI to write an entire C# application, I did ZERO coding, yes, literally nothing! I have NEVER coded in C# before, I gave it all requirements, worked with it like a project manager… it created a full blown working application that was beyond my expectations.
Coding is a tiny part of professional software development.
Also not true. Some days, all I do is code. I have a daily standup, maybe some meetings with UI/UX. It’s not like I’m out there going out in the world though repairing ATMs or something. 65% of my job is coding
Lots of my colleagues in SWE use full blown AI development tools.
We all use full blown AI development tools. Before that we had other tricks that did the same thing.
We must beware mistaking the instrument for the musician, or we get sold a broken old instrument that doesn’t perform miracles outside it’s master’s hand.
Some days, all I do is code.
So your instincts are correct. You need to learn the rest of the job, before the part you are doing is replaced by robots.
What are you using to get Claude to write for you? I’ve been using it to write a full stack Go/javascript app but it needs a lot of handholding.
There will always need to be a human operator to guide the machine.
I’m using Cursor. It’s done some very impressive things for me. https://www.cursor.com/features
I even used Claude AI to write an entire C# application, I did ZERO coding, yes, literally nothing! I have NEVER coded in C# before, I gave it all requirements, worked with it like a project manager… it created a full blown working application that was beyond my expectations.
I achieved the same in 2000 with a home grown framework, and again in 2006 with Ruby on Rails.
Astonishingly fast prototyping is a quarter of a centrury old.
- How are you enjoying maintaining this app in production? (Or is it not there yet, because it’s just very nice for a prototype?)
- How did Claude AI do at deploying it?
- Are you satisfied with Claude AIs answers to your boss’ traffic analytics and load balancing questions?
- When will Claude AI let you know how the A/B tests proved out for optimizing sales?
- Or doesn’t it do those things yet?
Computers are replacing us. They’ve been at it since their inception.
Keep learning the trade and you’ll find there’s a metric ton more that computers cannot help with, than that they can help with. That will get better. I’m working at making it get better.
I figure that my learning how to train the computers is job security. I didn’t count on it being a harsh lesson in how long it’s going to be before computers get not stupid.
I do have a plan for when I automate myself out of a job. It’s just not a plan I’m really counting on, because I’ve been trying for decades.
I’ve been constantly advised to have an exit plan, for when the computers replaced me, for the entirety of those same decades.
Most often by the same people who want me to charge less.
Funny thing, that. Take care who you listen to on this topic, and that their motives are.
Motive is to charge the rest of you a shit ton of money before the AI finally replace us.
It does help me if you all don’t buy into the bullshit that CEOs have been spouting about replacing us all.
We’ve all been undercharging for about 3 years due to it. AI hasn’t accomplished jack shit, but a lot of you have accepted lower pay than you probably should.
Glorified autocorrect… YES! It’s a really good analogy that i will use to temper the expectation of my boss. Also: AI hallucination is just a fancy way to say ’it’s a wrong answer’.
And if it’s going to be full-blown AGI then we’ll become AI psychologists.
That’s something that we’re probably going to have to figure out quickly. We won’t though given the lack of accountability of those in power.
If SWEs are losing their jobs you can imagine a lot of other white collar workers will be as well. This would mean you will be competing with many other people in other fields. The large number of unemployed will reduce demand for goods produced by those companies that are also laying off workers due to automation.
This is a bit of a tragedy of the commons where companies adopt the technology to increase profits but actually disrupt the economy, potentially leading to their own collapse.
It’s impossible to really prepare for this scenario because it requires you to simultaneously be ready for retirement in the next few years but also riots. I’m just hoping for the best for now.
We won’t though given the lack of accountability of those in power.
That is not an inevitable condition.
I’m not a programmer, but I don’t think I’d pay for code that was 95% accurate. That sounds buggy af
I am a programmer, and I also wouldn’t stand for that either. We also introduce bugs and are probably around that 95% rate, but at least we know the most important uses are correct and the person who introduced them can usually fix them quickly. With AI, there’s no guarantee where the bugs will occur.
You don’t have to pay for it. The billionaires do, and they will do it without hesitation
Well if it can replace senior software engineers… Wouldn’t it also be able to do almost all of the other jobs? Or are you referring to some future where AI advances massively, but robotics does not and handymen are still safe?
I’d say if all humans are unemployed, society would change massively. We can’t really tell how that’d work. But if machines / AI do all jobs, get food on the table… I don’t really know what other people would be doing. I think I’d relax and pursue a few hobbies and interests. Or it’d be some dystopia where humankind is oppressed by the machines and I’d fight for the resistance.
But regardless… In a world like that, money wouldn’t work the way it does now. Neither would salaries for labor mean anything.
Yeah. In this wild scenario, only the people who can crack the robots security protocols, and reprogram them, will have any influence over society.
I promise to be a benevolent ruler.
Except Michael Bay will have to return to making Transformers movies full time. Sorry about that, in advance.
Or the people who own the robots and dictate their programming (/control them). That would be my concern. Unless they’re sentient and make decisions completely on their own, they can be used to oppress people to other people’s wishes. As it’s the case with all (modern) technology. And currently AI isn’t shaped by the people, but by a rich minority and big tech companies. And I see some issues with that, specifically, in the near future.
Agreed on all points.
That said, I am smarter than the asshole CEOs, and the current state of computer security is abysmal.
So there’s still some hope that we are barreling toward my (mostly) benevolent reign over endless Michael Bay blockbuster summers.
Hopefully, for everyone’s sake, reality will fall somewhere in between.
But joking aside, money isn’t the only form of power. There aren’t that many billionaires (compared to he rest of us) and a billionaire’s influence is limited by what the rest of us will or won’t do.
Lol. Yeah I get it. Though I still think the rich companies dictate a lot of things. They do a lot of lobbying and paying people to make sure it’s not them who funds the majority of the country, they choose how much you pay for medication and everyday items, they choose to spy on everyone on the internet. Make you buy things you don’t need, make housing prices subject to speculation. Make everyone addicted to their phone and spend like several hours a day with it. Separate society into filter bubbles. I think a lot of these things aren’t liked by the people. Or are extremely unhealthy. Yet, they are a thing and never change. I think because some people will this into existance. Sure, they’re far from being almighty. But it’s enough control they have over everyone already.
And I think as they can use the internet as a tool for their interests (which had ultimately been invented to connect people), they could as well do the same with AI. I mean they train those models and choose in which ways they’re biased. What the can and can not talk about. If that’s paired with the surveillance tech, that’s already inside of each smart TV, smart appliance or Alexa… It’ll be kind of a dystopian scifi movie where someone else watches your steps all day, uses that to manipulate people… some kind of puppet master whom the bots really work for.
I’m really unsure. Sure, almost everything can be hacked. But does that really have an effect on the broader picture? Everytime I see some major hack, the next day it’s business as usual and everything keeps working as it used to.
Welcome to being a luddite.
It’s not actually about hating the progression of technology, it’s realizing that your labor has been leveraged against you. You will not bear any of the true fruits, because your bosses will use the fruits of your labor to purchase the AI to replace you.
It’s because the labor market is fucked and developers needed unions 20 years ago instead of thinking because they were “rockstars” and “made the big bucks” that they didn’t need anybody else.
We wouldn’t have to ask these kind of questions if the fruits of our labor were being equitably distributed.
Basically in the scenario described, this is what’s happening to developers:
Capitalism is an auto-immune disease of society.
Unions in the us have ruined any interest in joining. Other countries have different imblementations. If I could start from scratch but laws favor the existing taking over.
I was going to learn how to give a really good handjob but the AI robots will probably take over that too.
Riot.
How’s that working for everyone in the USA? How many “riots” or protests have we done that yield nothing?
Turn up the heat. Asking nicely has never worked.
https://stacker.com/business-economy/30-victories-workers-rights-won-organized-labor-over-years
Here’s a half decent starting point.
Ultimately we need to prepare for a future where the majority of jobs have been automated and need a way to keep the economy going. Everyone being employed full time is just something that is not sustainable on the long term as technology progresses. We’ll eventually need UBI because otherwise all the money will be transferred to nearly fully automated companies controlling basically everything. We just won’t be able to keep everyone employed without creating a massive amount of bullshit jobs nobody really wants to do. The better way is UBI and people going into research or creative works, and aim higher like space travel.
We’re not quite ready yet and people are way too invested in capitalism for this to work just yet. But it will become a necessity eventually. It’s not just affecting IT, it’s affecting all sectors: we can basically 3D print houses now, we’re not far off automating farming either. We will reach a point where most of society has been automated, we can feed everyone effortlessly.
Well before that level of complexity is achieved, the jobs of CEOs and Managers will be gone. Question is, will the Ai CEO really want to risk the safety of a review, knowing that it IS the company. Pump and Dump won’t do it any more. Then CEOs need to actually work for their money. (Or well… get replaced by an Ai)
Spend their days (and some nights) tweaking and refining AI prompts to get the stupid thing to generate the software that the dumbass product manager wants and the user does not.
You know…
Pretty much the same thing they do now.
