Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque recently grabbed headlines with his audacious prediction that “there [will be] no programmers in five years.” While such statements make great social media clickbait, they don’t accurately reflect the reality of creativity’s role in complex software development. Yes, AI will profoundly change the software engineering profession, but those changes will mostly enable inventive and capable developers to reach new heights of innovation. Software development is already being transformed by generative AI. Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot has more than one million paying customers. Some researchers forecast that between 50% and 80% of software engineering job descriptions will involve generative AI within a few years.
For the foreseeable future, generative AI’s principle value will be automating the mundane tasks that take up so much developer time. Copilots will likely replace many frameworks and code exchanges because they’re faster. They’ll dramatically improve auto-completion and spell check. That’s the grunt work of software development that most programmers will be happy to shed.
Generative AI is expected to be applied most often in testing, vulnerability management and writing code, according to an IDC survey of U.S. developers. However, the same survey found that fewer than 10% of developers expect the technology to have value in such creative disciplines as interface design, prototyping or translating user requirements into applications.
Where LLMs Fail
Building enterprise-grade software requires a keen understanding of business concepts and the ability to design novel solutions. That’s where large language models stumble. Trained on a large corpus of existing data, they excel at quickly spitting out what is already known. That can be of great value, but rewording and repetition aren’t the same as creativity.
Generative AI’s main impact on software development will be reducing mundane tasks and giving developers more time to innovate. Automating manual coding may help dent the chronic shortage of software engineers that shows no sign of easing. However, I have not seen any evidence that technology can think outside the box.
Doom and gloom predictions about automation’s impact on the workforce are nothing new. Occasionally they come true. Thanks to automated switching and direct dialing, telephone operator jobs in the U.S. have fallen by more than 95% since the 1950s. Robots continue to reduce the need for humans to do work no one wants to do.
Up the Stack
The more common outcome is for automation to move jobs higher up the value stack.
● E-commerce and customer self-service were expected to doom the retail industry, but total retail employment is expected to grow nearly 8% through 2030, led by services such as home delivery and specialty merchandise.
● About 90% of a commercial airline flight is now fully automated, yet the shortage of pilots is at an all-time high. That job has evolved from flying the plane to overseeing complex systems and being available for rare but critical emergencies.
● Online banking was supposed to kill bank branches, but there are more today than in 2000. Their role has shifted from processing transactions to delivering complex and customized services to the benefit of tellers and customers alike.
● While travel agent employment dropped substantially with the advent of online booking and the end of airline commissions, the industry is growing again, according to the BLS. Many travel agents have thrived by reinventing themselves as experienced consultants and simplifying the complexities of navigating multiple booking sites.
● Healthcare technology has made huge leaps in diagnostics and patient record management, but the need for human judgment, empathy and complex decision-making ensures that the demand for clinicians will remain strong for a long time.
Is the job of a software developer more like a telephone operator or a commercial airline pilot? Any technology executive will tell you the question is absurd. As a founder and CEO, I believe a top-notch full-stack engineer is more valuable than millions of dollars in venture capital. We’ve only scratched the surface of how software can enrich our lives. Automation will free up developers to spend more time on the tasks that make a difference.