AI Replace Programmers

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-no-programmers-will-be-needed-within-5-years-due-to-AI/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

Fewer people will indeed be hand-writing tens of thousands of lines of code. However, someone still has to identify use cases for an application, design the application, develop the application, evaluate and tweak the code for the application, test the application, deploy the application, and evaluate the application.

Whoever does that will need to understand code, code architecture, and coding techniques and be able to identify potential exploits within the codebase.

Despite the changes, the role of programmers will remain crucial in the future of coding. Their numbers may even increase. However, they will not be as prone to developing carpal tunnel syndrome or relying on eye-strain remedies as they do now, thanks to the evolving nature of coding.

Coding will become a much more accessible activity, just like creating polished and professional-looking graphics, which are much more accessible today to people without art training.

We will eventually see the end of multi-thousand-employee enterprises and an explosion of small businesses that can match punches with today’s big players.

In another couple of decades, you and half a dozen buddies will get together to operate a business that can serve the globe with a unique product or service that each of you has some expertise in to create a successful enterprise that currently requires employing a few hundred people.

As I’ve pointed out in other answers, this transition period will be excruciating for many people. Lives will be lost, and we can only mitigate the widespread destruction that will eventually be resolved by instituting a universal basic income.

We are already seeing the beginning of a new infrastructure emerging in primitive forms with entrepreneurial solutions such as drop-shipping and outsourced manufacturing to dedicated manufacturers that don’t sell any product they design but rather provide a manufacturing service for designers.

Once it’s completed, the most significant upside of the transition is that we will all have the opportunity to create revenue for ourselves based on our ingenuity. At the same time, all the grunt work that people toil on today while wondering when they can escape their hell will be handled through automation.

People will be ever more reliant on their knowledge and creativity to create success for themselves while being free of toil.

It’s a bloody scary time right now — and primarily because it’s defined by the greed epitomized by eight people owning half of the world, but once we cross that finish line, people will be cheering because we will all finally be free of the treadmill wearing our lives down to dust.

It certainly is scary as hell right now, but if we survive our greed and environmental stupidity, we’ll arrive at the closest we have ever been to a Star Trek utopia.

I highly recommend watching Geordi LaForge or Tom Paris devising engineering solutions or Janeway programming the Holodeck to see how they issue verbal commands and make adjustments.

Watching Tony Stark work on his 3D table is exciting, and it is exciting to imagine what will happen in the real world because we are heading in that direction of usability.

I remember getting a good laugh with a friend when I joked about being in our senior years and reminiscing about how we used to kill ourselves by being on our knees and feeding miles of cable through small tunnels. Now, we’ve got wireless that kicks the old wired solutions’ ass.

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This question was originally answered on Quora and written as is.

I’m not familiar with Devin per se, but I don’t see AI “replacing people” in any capacity it is developed to function within — and I use that description with a caveat because AI IS replacing hundreds of thousands of jobs — if not millions worldwide.

AI has the potential to liberate humans from mundane tasks. It can free up time that would otherwise be spent on repetitive, clearly defined functions while still relying on humans to make decisions and set the parameters for these tasks.

Tasks that require creativity, judgment, and understanding of context will continue to be the domain of humans. These include quality control analyses, determining the scope and context of tasks, and designing the application for which a task is intended.

This is where the waters become muddy because most jobs are mostly drudge work.

Millions of labour hours are spent every year on tasks that can be automated.

Capitalists know how much they can save by eliminating humans from repetitive and clearly defined tasks.

Many may be arrogant enough to believe they can supplant human creativity and intuitive judgment with an artificial solution. Companies like Disney, however, are butting up against an immovable wall in this regard and getting their noses bloody because of their sociopathic disregard for the human equation in the capitalist environment.

We will see many psychopathic capitalists decide they can do without the most expensive of their labouring monkeys, and they will fail because of it.

We are likely to witness a significant loss of jobs due to AI. This is a reality that few people doubt, and those who do will be in for a rude awakening when the replacement rate reaches a critical level.

Yes and no, but yes, jobs will be lost. Developers with initiative, resources, and creativity to imagine solutions will also be empowered to create their own software enterprises. New jobs will be created, and we’ll see an explosion of “individual corporations” replacing a landscape of monolithic enterprises that employ hundreds of thousands, which will be much healthier for our economy in the long run. This change in our corporate landscape will reintroduce the stability we once had before the middle class came under assault in the 80s and eviscerated our unions.

Right now, when a monolithic corporation makes a minor cut in its costs, thousands of jobs are lost. The economy is stunted as a result of a minor bookkeeping adjustment or on the whims of a sociopath who decides they no longer need to pay half of the staff of the enterprise they just purchased and sends them off packing.

In an environment populated mainly by independent entrepreneurs and small “mom-and-pop shops,” any single endeavour can fail, and its failure has no discernable impact on the economy or society at large.

The biggest, most disruptive, and potentially destructive challenge is arriving at this newly recovered and economically defined demographic dynamic through a smoothly managed transition.

The most crucial step to reduce the negative impact and the widespread hardship resulting from the transition to an automated society is to build a solid base upon which people are free to live and pursue the motivations arising from their imaginations and inventiveness.

We must improve liquidity throughout our economic systems, which requires a two-fold process. While the first is to ensure everyone’s basic living needs are met through a universal income floor, the second requires freeing up capitalization for entrepreneurial initiatives.

This second step will be the most difficult to implement because it will require the most powerful among us to relinquish their power. That will happen through reasoned measures or due to entrenched and narcissistic arrogance that will lead us all to widespread chaos.

Hopefully, most will be able to identify entirely new vistas of opportunity for themselves in which they can benefit from the changing landscape in ways that are becoming less and less possible by reaching a saturation level where the only room left for growth is a takeover of smaller enterprises.

As individuals, their creative capacities and economic potential are far more reliant on the support and inspiration they receive from the collaboration synergies than on armies of sycophants telling them what they want to hear.

Some will be wise enough to leverage a massive transition in human society in their favour because they understand and value human ingenuity. Others will fail because their misanthropic disdain toward their servants leads their economic inventiveness to an empty silo devoid of value in the marketplace. If we are to go by the statistics which indicate the prevalence of psychopaths at the boardroom level matches the density of a prison population, I would expect about 20 percent of our plutocrat dynasties will not survive the transition and humanity as a whole will be the beneficiaries of such a surgical culling of our economic dynamics.

Cognition Labs — The developers of Devin AI — LinkedIn Profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/cognition-ai-labs/

They can be followed on X via @cognition_labs

Below is a screen of current AI initiatives underway for augmenting the software development process — 24 AI projects for software development alone as of September 2024: