My loyalty requires the answer to this: Will AI do more or less frequent software updates? 🤣 Seriously though I think AI will be a powerful tool for programmers.

Recent advances in deep learning and generative AI, such as ChatGPT, are receiving a lot of attention, and are getting better every year. Some programmers are already using ChatGPT to automate parts of their jobs. ChatGPT in its current form can already write simple code for you. Will this mean programmers will be replaced soon?

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Go to a farm and you'll still find people doing hard physical work, because there are things that are too hard to automate or not worth the cost. Some programmers will be out of work, but those that learn to use the tools will be more productive (until AI becomes AGI and then we are all unemployed).

I assume it will be the same as working as an operator. The AI will do the programming with human instructions, and a human has to verify the result before releasing/using it.

No.

This here is the text I need to get past the censor bots for "no" not being a long enough answer despite the fact that the question unequivocally and obviously can be answered with a succinct and unambiguous "no". Really such clickbait titles should be banned from this sub based on the rules for discussion here but I digress as I feel that I have already made my point.

I have a programmer friend who says he uses ChatGPT to do 5-10% of his job now

Unless we've significant technology breakthrough, AI will only serve as amplifier tools for people.

Even if you specify the requirements very carefully, it often still gives you codes/scripts which can't even compile/run. So at least you still need to debug, add the parts which the AI missed, rewrite the ridiculously wrong codes/scripts, and maybe return the final codes/scripts to the AI to clean up.

Throwing things back and forth, maybe it still saves you time, but absolutely not like an autopilot.

Until it does and everyone is told to retrain again with: "just go into the trades bro, AI can't fix a pipe"

former coders should learn how to mine coal

Both. AI will be able to partition what needs/"wants" updates and do it faster on the fly but will also write better programming that does not need as much fixing.

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Charlotte_D_Katakuri:

Recent advances in deep learning and generative AI, such as ChatGPT, are receiving a lot of attention, and are getting better every year. Some programmers are already using ChatGPT to automate parts of their jobs. ChatGPT in its current form can already write simple code for you. Will this mean programmers will be replaced soon?

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/11qb0g1/will_ai_replace_programmers/jc25rpa/

The answer is yes. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but it will happen. I'm not the most tech savvy person, but if businesses can find any way at all to not pay an employee a proper wage to do something they will do it.

Already people in the tech sector have their jobs replaced by programmers in lower wage countries, this is just the next step.

I envision a nightmare hellscape job where a living, breathing programmer, has to spend their days fixing AI generated code because some nerd in accounting determined it was cheaper than doing it right the first time.

As the AI gets better at coding, less humans will be needed to fix the coding.

“Learn to coal bro 🤓”… -average Redditor in 5 years.

Amplifiers : I see the issue yes.

Standardizers : now we're talking... 😏

I've tried to approach this question practically myself, by seeing how much I could actually get Github copilot and GPTChat to do for me. The problem I had is that I still needed some sort of specification of what I wanted. In some cases this could potentially be replaced by an image, but often it seems to require precise language detailing exactly what should happen. Programming languages can be seen as just a type of specification, after all, that allows a compiler to generate machine code. So maybe programming languages will evolve to meet the needs of the AI programmer/human programmer better. Maybe that will look a lot like natural language - think prompt engineering. Maybe like current high level languages. Maybe more of a question and answer exchange between human and AI.

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Again, no. Typing code is to programmers what hammering is to carpenters. Give me the best nailgun in the world, it still wont make be a carpenter. Having AI tools to assist in programming is welcome.

I hope true A.I. will take over the governments and go full on socialism like in utopian sy fy books, where being rich means being a millionaire not a billionaire taking advantage of workers....The only thing wrong with socialism is the human factor. True A.I. is on it's way we can't stop it.

For 95% of the coders, programmers - yes, in 5-10 years there will be no need for workhorse members on a team. Only truly innovative, pioneering technologists will have a reason to exist to expand the template of capabilities the AI can learn and apply. Volume coders, clock-punchers, 'went in because parents said it was a good field' people will need to find other work.

No. Programming is not just about sitting in front of a computer and write some code according to some specifications. Most of the time goes into figuring out the right technology/library for a given task or how to modify existing code to achieve a new feature without breaking old stuff, performance work, sorting security issues, bugs, etc. All tasks without a clear specification you can just throw into a prompt. Anyone that gives you a straight yes is just not familiar with the job and misses the fact the developer work involves not only using general knowledge in programming well defined tasks which is what AI is very good at, and for which will and already is a great tool for more simple tasks we do although you still need an experienced developer to evaluate and test the code they produce since they are quite prone to errors for the inexperienced one.

What is a programmer? I would say in the most naive understanding of the term it is someone that inputs instructions for computers to perform. Who's to say that a Natural language isn't just another obfuscation on computer programming languages? As is, no programmer is writing raw machine instructions, we are all using languages built on top of each other (usually) multiple layers deep. I don't see current "AI" as being anything more than another abstraction.

Of course it will.

Probably faster than many other white collar professions. Why wouldn't it?

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I’m currently asking it to convert bash scripts and rust with some cryptography to nodeJS scripts. If an extension could compile and run the results to validate whether they run that would be incredible.

Once ai can write its own code it isn't just game over for programmers. It's game over for everyone. An ai that can replace programmers can also code a better ai, and with enough evolution can program any software anywhere, including the software that powers every business in the world.

Anyone who imagines that programmers will lose their jobs but the rest of the world will keep going as normal...doesn't understand how much of the world runs on software.

Programming will be one of the last jobs replaced by ai.

In the meantime ai will provide more and more powerful tools to allow programmers to create more powerful software in less time. Hopefully with less bugs.

No, if anything it will make our jobs easier. Just another tool, probably also full of bugs

Are you a programmer?

professional programmers are mad. i code for fun so yeah it will def kill programming in the traditional sense

It’s a hammer for now, until the hammer grows legs, can recognize nails and wood and feel the need to build houses

I am someone's programmers friend, and I also use Chat to do 5-10% of my job.

...mainly boilerplate stuff, but also as a debugger. "How could this code block be simplified/improved, why isn't this working, is possible to "x" while "y" is "z"ing?

When that happens, mission accomplished I say.

What about in 10 years?

There will probably be other breakthroughs in AI in the next 10 years but there’s also a chance that we will face roadblocks and find ourselves in a plateau, similar to what’s happened with other technologies in the past. The point at which we we will reach such plateau is almost impossible to tell but my guess is that there will always be a need for developers to perform the least structured tasks. The reason is that AI as we know it today is good at finding patterns in existing data and generating new data as an interpolation of those patterns, hence if a problem has no identifiable pattern or is different enough from the training dataset, it will be hard for an AI to generate a result.

The issue with that argument is that the abstraction language is regular old English / human, so at some point nearly everyone will be capable of “programming”. No need for a dedicated programming profession

The same could be said for a lawyer or an author or someone else that uses language as a profession. Knowing the language is not enough to know how to use it to get the things you want/need. There is a lot more to "programming" than just writing code.

Wait, so there will still be accounts? Lol

If it can replace programmers then can't any profession be replaced?

"Please write me a program that can trade stocks at high velocity relative to market trends" Boom lots of finance bros are gone.

The thing people are ignoring that is as long as there are other jobs, there will be a need for software engineers to try automate them, if SE are replaced, it means every job can be replaced without a SE

It's not even a hammer right now, more like using a rock as a hammer that breaks every few hits.

Once the job of a software engineer is completely replaced it likely means we have solved logistical thinking and planning with AI.

Right now I can go download templates for apps/websites/ use website builders etc and none of these killed SEs yet AI still cant compete with a template that is already pre-made.

Once we solve logistical planning and AI can truly develop things, simultaneously we would've got rid of every job in the world. It would only be a matter of years before the AI designed robots, factories etc would replace physical labour in that instance.

Exactly. Now, there are some caveats. Perhaps there is a gap between ai replacing "some" software engineering roles and "all" software engineering roles and during that time other jobs will continue.

Maybe the last 10% will prove difficult for ai. Who knows?

The bigger story here is not that jobs are being replaced. That's just hype from people who don't understand the nature of those jobs. At work we look at gpt3 as an interesting toy. It's definitely impressive but it's often quicker to write our own code.

The bigger story is that chatgpt is showing a lot of promise and will change the world, giving us powerful tools to either build things faster, or achieve more than we could before.

I agree, it’s very up in the air.

I just find it funny how many people with 0 SE experience or mathematical background is telling us we are wrong 😂 especially since I studied AI and suddenly these overnight professionals who were mocking AI 5 years ago are acting more knowledgable. What a world we live in.

Yeah. I have felt that we are in the "age of ai" probably for the last 5-10 years, as things have been ramping up. And nowadays I'd say most startups in tech are either built primarily around AI or are deliberately using AI somewhere in their product.

AI is an accelerator and a powerful tool. As a software engineer I'm very much looking forward to ai-assisted tooling to aid in software development. There are some IP/legal hurdles still to be cleared I think but I do think it's here to stay.

What is a volume coder?

Funny because as a dev I see people hire western people instead because the culture issues with indian devs.

They realized asking for something and getting what you want is not that easy.

But oh chatgpt will understand stakeholders?

Like you said, youre not tech savy so how would you know

Because an AI dont argue with stakeholders. You know being a dev isnt about writing code, its finding out what problems need to be solved

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Chatgpt is a language model. It has no ability to critically think. It codes at the level of a kid copying random code from github.