Microsoft CTO says 95% of code will be generated by AI in the next five years. Is there a future for software developers?
Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott spoke about how, in his opinion, jobs for software developers will be shaped.
Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott spoke about how, in his opinion, jobs for software developers will be shaped.
He doesn’t expect humans to be completely removed from programming. He says AI tools will allow small teams to work on large-scale projects. His prediction is that in the next half century we will see more code generated by artificial intelligence than ever before, but that doesn’t mean humans will be pushed out of the programming process.
«95% of the code will be generated by artificial intelligence. Very little — line by line — will be human-written code,» Scott noted.
This doesn’t mean that AI will do the work of developing software, he said. «So I think the more important and interesting part of the authorship will still be entirely human,» he added.
Scott said he’s been programming for 41 years — long enough to watch the industry go through similar changes when he was a kid in the 80s.
«During the transition from assembly language programming to high-level language programming, there were old farts who said, ‘You’re not a real programmer if you don’t know how to write assembly language, and that’s the only real way to code and the way to do things right,’» he said. «Nobody talks about that anymore.»
What’s happening with artificial intelligence, according to Scott, is not too different from the situation described above. He believes that «the best programmers» will adapt to the introduction of artificial intelligence into their work.
«We went very quickly from developers being skeptical about these tools to, ‘You’re going to get this from my, you know, cold, dying fingers.’ I think of it as one of the most important tools in my arsenal, and I’ll never give it up,» he said.
While Scott believes AI can lower the barrier to entry into the coding field, he says it will still be necessary to hire programmers who have a good understanding of niche problems.
«Think of it as upskilling everyone. It makes everyone a programmer, and you don’t have to go find someone to make a website for you anymore,» Scott says. «But if you’re trying to solve the world’s most complex computational problems, I think you’re going to need computer scientists, and they’re going to be incredibly good at using these tools.»
The Microsoft executive added that AI is likely to cut out the middleman when it comes to simpler, more personal needs. Instead of waiting for a developer to anticipate your need for a particular tool, ideally, he said, you would be able to use AI-powered programs to create it yourself.
«You have teams of people whose job is to anticipate a bunch of very detailed user needs in a narrow space. Then they’ll write a bunch of code, and then figure out how to overlay that code on a particular user experience. Yvon hopes they’ve done a good enough job,» he said.
That, Scott believes, will change. «You might not need as much code anymore,» he says.
While the responsibilities assigned to engineers may look different over time, Scott doesn’t believe the role of engineer itself will disappear.
«I hope it becomes easier for small teams to do big things,» Scott says. «I think small teams are just faster than big teams. You can do a lot with 10 really great, super-motivated engineers with really powerful tools.»
Recall, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, the manufacturer of the Claude series of models, suggested that the rapid development of artificial intelligence could lead to an almost complete absorption of coding tasks within the next year.
Previously, Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram and now Chief Product Officer at AI company Anthropic, said that the role of software engineers is rapidly changing, and that they will soon start reviewing «routine code» created by artificial intelligence, rather than writing it themselves.
Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman says the rapid emergence and adoption of AI could force software developers to stop coding, forcing them to upskill in the field to gain new skills.
Their statements come amid the growing popularity of the programming technique vibe-coding, which involves delegating the writing of code to AI chatbots based on user instructions. It was first described by Andrey Karpaty, a former OpenAI researcher and now director of artificial intelligence and computer vision for Autopilot at Tesla.
«I ask [the AI chatbot] the dumbest things, like ‘halve the sidebar padding,’ because I’m too lazy to figure it out myself. I always ‘Accept All,’ I don’t read the differences anymore,» he says.
«What used to be programmers’ work is increasingly moving into the ‘monkey job’ category.» A native of Aitiv, with 20 years of experience, is convinced that AI will soon replace programmers. There is a discussion on Threads with 100+ comments
«What used to be programmers’ work is increasingly moving into the ‘monkey job’ category.» A native of Aitiv, with 20 years of experience, is convinced that AI will soon replace programmers. There is a discussion on Threads with 100+ comments
«In 12 months, we could be in a world where AI writes almost all the code.» Anthropic CEO believes AI will replace programmers within a year
«In 12 months, we could be in a world where AI writes almost all the code.» Anthropic CEO believes AI will replace programmers within a year
Read the country’s main IT news in our Telegram
Read the country’s main IT news in our Telegram
