I too believed that a software engineer's job is to identify and enforce rigorous specification of the abstract high level requirement. And I too was not taking AI advancements seriously but then I took a closer took at what AI tools do today.
Here's my concern:
1. AI assistance thrive on structured data
2. Computer programs are some of the most structured data. And it's available abundantly out in the open.
3. Yes, you can't generate an Uber for bycycles with a single prompt, but you can fire half your development team and increase the productivity of the rest of your dev team with an OpenAI subscription.
> Computer programs are some of the most structured data. And it's available abundantly out in the open.
This is the same Fallacy that we hear since 50 years. All Program requirements are almost the same, just reuse and adapt an existing one.
Guess why it has never worked? Because the premise is false.
Structured data for X is not optimal for Y (and can be even very wrong).
Apart from the "personal blog software", everything else has various needs of accountability. AI Black box approach is not suitable for any of these so you have to manually verify the code. Veryfing code that you are not familiar with especially in complex interactions is much more difficult that writing it (from this comes the often "rewrite from scratch request", because institutional knowledge has been lost, imagine how much worse it is if this knowledge has never been there in the first place).
Finally and the most important one, all AI models rely on learning, if there is noone to learn from all you get is stagnation. Most of the breakthroughs come from a complete reimagining of the solution space. If the solution space is fixed because "AI has substituted all Engineers" there is no going forward.
> you can fire half your development team and increase the productivity of the rest of your dev team with an OpenAI subscription.
Here’s another perspective on job loss:
Given that…
1. …OpenAI accelerates ALL knowledge work productivity, meaning that any human laborer is suddenly much more valuable than last year;
2. …there is a notable arms race at the moment that is accelerating tech and business innovation at a blistering speed, where higher rates of innovation outcomes will be expected across industries just to keep up;
3. …there is still a lot of money looking for growth;
…then, because shouldn’t this result in an overall increase in demand for human labor?
Looking around society, there is clearly a LOT of work to be done. “Leaning in” with a spirit of optimism may be more advantageous for the long-term.
Here's my concern:
1. AI assistance thrive on structured data
2. Computer programs are some of the most structured data. And it's available abundantly out in the open.
3. Yes, you can't generate an Uber for bycycles with a single prompt, but you can fire half your development team and increase the productivity of the rest of your dev team with an OpenAI subscription.