Matthew Prince, CEO of the American cybersecurity company Cloudflare, said that programming skills are still important, and AI should make programmers more efficient, not replace them.
Matthew Prince, CEO of the American cybersecurity company Cloudflare, said that programming skills are still important, and AI should make programmers more efficient, not replace them.
Prince told Business Insider that he doesn’t write much code as CEO anymore, but noted that it’s «incredibly convenient» to understand the basics, even when AI tools do the heavy lifting.
«Even if you’re no longer the type of person who puts their hands on the keyboard and writes code, I think a basic understanding is useful,» said the Cloudflare CEO.
Before starting the company, Prince studied computer science, which places a strong emphasis on skills like coding and software development. Although he no longer does programming, Prince believes that this education helps him better perform his duties because he understands how Cloudflare’s engineering team builds software.
According to him, the role of Software Engineer is still needed, even though artificial intelligence can now help generate code.
«Especially in an industry that is as security-conscious as we are, you know, no code is ever going to be released without significant human review,» Prince said. He added that the same is true in the reverse case — «no human code is ever going to be released without AI review.»
Okta CEO Todd McKinnon shares similar views, saying that software engineers aren’t disappearing just because the industry has become more efficient. He believes they’ll be needed more in the next few years.
Such predictions are due to the fact that many Software Engineers have experienced significant changes in their work, as artificial intelligence tools are increasingly used to automate programming and so-called vibe coding.
Google has said that more than a quarter of its new code is generated by AI, and Microsoft’s CTO recently said that 95% of its code will be generated by AI in five years. The increasing effectiveness of AI has even forced some companies, such as Salesforce, to pause hiring new programmers.
Cloudflare CEO says the company isn’t ignoring the benefits of AI and is running a series of internal pilots to see where the technology can make its team more productive. He notes that machine learning systems have helped identify previously undetected threats. He says AI systems have also saved thousands of hours of work in areas like customer support and led to higher customer satisfaction and ratings.
He assured that this did not lead to a reduction in the number of customer service employees, and the integration of AI is not so much about replacing teams, but about giving them «superpowers». «AI has helped us not to replace people, but to make them better», — says Matthew Prince.
Previously, Cloudflare created its own artificial intelligence, AI Labyrinth, which constantly generates fake pages with unnecessary information to confuse bots that collect information for AI.
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