- Tech leaders are sounding the alarm that within months, AI will be doing all new coding and programming—but there’s conflict when it comes to timing and impact.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei had a bold prediction this week that could kill thousands of jobs in software development, an industry that has historically boasted of record growth.
In just three to six months, AI will be writing 90% of all the code produced, Amodei tells the Council on Foreign Relations. “In 12 months, we may be in a world where AI is writing essentially all of the code.”
Programmers will still need to be around to dictate specific conditions, parameters, and goals, but he says that too may soon be outsourced to technology.
“As long as there are these small pieces that a human programmer needs to do—(that) the AI isn’t good at—I think human productivity will actually be enhanced,” Amodei says. “But on the other hand, I think that eventually all those little islands will get picked off by AI systems.”
While he adds that AI will eventually be able to do everything humans can, not all is lost. It will usher in an era of deep thinking on how to make human capital the most resourceful.
“We need to think about usefulness and uselessness in a different way than we have before,” he says. “Our current way of thinking has not been tenable.”
However, not everyone agrees with Amodei’s stark assessment.
Even CEOs are divided on the impact of AI on the tech industry
IBM’s CEO Arvind Krishna has a more conservative outlook, telling a crowd at SXSW on Tuesday that he disagrees with Amodei’s timeline and result.
“I think the number is going to be more like 20-30% of the code could get written by AI—not 90%” Krishna says.
There are simple use cases where, yes, automated programming makes sense, but there is an equally complicated number where it doesn’t make sense, he adds.
Krishna is also bullish when it comes to programmers. Because AI can dramatically scale up a programmer’s productivity, it can lead to even greater company gains.
“History has shown that the most productive company gains market share, and then you can provide more products, which lets you get more market share,” he says.
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Mark Zuckerberg has expressed a similar sentiment. In an earnings call in January, he said that 2025 would be the year a software engineering AI agent will have “coding and problem-solving abilities of around a good mid-level engineer.” Though dramatic change may not happen until next year, he hopes Meta is the company that will be able to usher in the innovation.
At Google, more than 25% of the company’s new code is already being produced by AI, according to CEO Sundar Pichai.
However, Google is one of several big names in tech that have had a recent massive shedding of their workforce. Intel and Tesla are also among those that have cut over 10,000 employees in the last two years. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts the field of software development will grow by 17% between 2023 and 2033.