Jeff Dean, Google’s chief scientist, has said that artificial intelligence will soon be able to reach the skill level of a junior software engineer. He believes that such an AI should know programming better than at a basic level.
Jeff Dean, Google’s chief scientist, has said that artificial intelligence will soon be able to reach the skill level of a junior software engineer. He believes that such an AI should know programming better than at a basic level.
«I would argue that it’s probably possible next year,» Dean said at the AI Ascent event.
As Business Insider reports, many tech leaders are making similar predictions as AI models continue to improve in programming, and such tools are becoming increasingly popular among programmers. However, AI still has a lot to learn beyond the basics of programming before it can perform at a human level, according to Jeff Dean.
«This hypothetical virtual engineer should be better at many other things than just writing code in an IDE. He should know how to run tests, debug performance issues, and other things like that,» says Google’s chief scientist.
According to Dean, AI will learn to program like humans.
«We know how human engineers do it. They learn to use the different tools that we have and can use them to achieve that goal. And they get that wisdom from more experienced engineers, usually, or by reading a lot of documentation», — he said.
According to Jeff Dean, a «junior virtual engineer» will be quite good at reading documentation and «trying out different things in virtual environments.» This allows him to improve his capabilities. Dean believes that the impact of AI programmers will be significant.
OpenAI recently launched Codex, an AI assistant for programmers. It runs in an isolated cloud environment, ensuring security and allowing it to work with the user’s codebase without access to the internet.
Shawn K, a software engineer with 20 years of experience, said he lost his job last year and has since been living in a trailer on wheels, working as a delivery driver and selling things on eBay to make ends meet. He has applied for more than 800 jobs but still hasn’t found a new one, and he blames AI for this.
