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A big question is constantly being discussed in the world of technology - will AI (Artificial Intelligence) take away the jobs of software engineers in the future?
Many experts agree that while AI is rapidly evolving, it's unlikely to completely replace software engineers in the foreseeable future. AI is more likely to be used as a tool to augment their work, assisting with tasks like code generation, review, and testing, rather than replacing them altogether. Software engineers will still be needed to oversee complex systems, solve novel problems, and ensure the quality and reliability of software, tasks that AI is not yet capable of handling.
But despite the advancements in AI, software engineers play crucial roles in complex problem-solving, interpreting sentiments, and identifying ambiguous issues, indicating that a complete overhaul by AI is still some time away.
As multiple AI tools flood the market, software developers are contemplating their future career prospects in this field with growing concern.
AI is not replacing people: Pichai
Recently, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google and Alphabet, shared his perspective on this matter. During an interview, he told that AI is not taking away people's jobs, but it is making them more productive and smarter. Sundar Pichai said in a recent interview to Bloomberg that AI is not replacing people, but making development faster and better.
Pichai described AI as "an accelerator" i.e. a tool to accelerate, not to replace humans. He said, "Because of AI we are able to create better things and our engineering team will grow further."
Job cuts
However, Google has fired people from some departments in the last few months. About 200 people were laid off from the Global Business Unit and 12,000 employees were fired in early 2023. Despite this, more than 183,000 people were working in Google as of December 2024.
Sundar Pichai admitted that some people's concerns are justified, especially when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently said that AI could eliminate half of the entry-level white collar jobs in the next 5 years. Pichai said on this, "I respect such views and it is important that we discuss it openly."
AI cannot replace senior and experienced developers
Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich also talked about the future of AI and software development in an event recently. He said that AI cannot replace senior and experienced developers. Right now AI can only help in simple tasks like creating web apps or prototypes. But when it comes to large and complex software projects, human brains are still needed there.
He said that AI tools such as autoregressive transformers are still weak in understanding and handling large and complex codebases. This is the reason why it will not be possible to create complete software on its own with AI even in the next 5 years.