AI replacing programmers?

There’s much talk of late about generative AI replacing jobs. And for some, like programmers, the fear is palpable. Amazon built its own AI coding assistant, CodeWhisperer. Google is encouraging its developers to use the new coding features in Bard.

Seems a little like interviewing and training your replacement. 

Not cool.

Given the tech industry's rush to deploy AI, it's easy to envision a future where programmers are not needed. 

It’s fair to say AI effectively is the beginning of the end for coding as we know it. The other side of that argument is the effective collaboration between developers and AI. According to Zachary Tatlockm, a professor of computer science at the University of Washington, “It's unclear if there's any cap on the amount of software that humanity wants or needs. One way to think about it is that for the past 50 years, we have been massively underproducing. We haven't been meeting software demand.”

So maybe this partnership with AI has potential. But for coders, the nature of the job is likely changed forever. Sure, codes still need human verification, but for the bulk of the work? AI’s got it covered already. 

And as AI gets smarter, it begs the question, when does AI get so good at coding that there's nothing left for a human programmer to do? 

For the time being, it is more likely that AI will continue to augment human capabilities in various fields, such as healthcare, finance, and transportation, rather than completely replace humans. In some cases, AI may even create new job opportunities and industries. I mean, the ATM didn’t replace tellers…

Still, many people across many industries are asking the same question, “How do I get good at the tasks that are less likely to be replaced by a machine?”