NVIDIA's prediction of coding's death manifests at Google: "More than a quarter of all new code at Google is generated by AI, then reviewed and accepted by engineers"

What you need to know

During Alphabet’s recent earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai revealed that more than a quarter of Google’s new code is generated using AI.
The CEO also indicated that the AI-generated code is double-checked by engineers for errors and mistakes before it’s accepted.
Software, banking, and architecture jobs are among the top professions on AI’s chopping block.

As a seasoned software developer with over two decades of experience under my belt, I must admit that the rapid advancements in AI and its impact on coding have left me both intrigued and slightly apprehensive. It’s fascinating to witness the evolution of AI from text and image generation tasks to complex coding tasks, but it also stirs up feelings of uncertainty about the future of my profession.

According to recent announcements, Microsoft’s earnings for their initial fiscal quarter surpassed expectations set by financial analysts, mainly because of the robust performance of their cloud computing sector. This growth can be attributed to an increasing number of businesses adopting artificial intelligence trends.

In the initial quarter of fiscal year 2025, the tech company known as Redmond recorded a total income of $65.6 billion – marking a significant 16% rise compared to the earnings from the previous year. This positive trend is also observed in their gaming sector, where they experienced a substantial 43% jump in revenue when contrasted with last year’s figures. The surge can be attributed to their acquisition of Activision Blizzard King.

In their latest financial conference, Alphabet reported a significant surge in revenue – an impressive 34% year-on-year rise. What grabbed attention, however, was the statement from CEO Sundar Pichai suggesting that Google employs AI capabilities for generating approximately a fourth of its new programming code (as mentioned by Tom’s Hardware).

Currently, over a fourth of the fresh coding done at Google is automatically produced by AI. After that, it’s inspected and approved by our engineers, allowing them to accomplish more tasks and work more efficiently.

Over the last several months, there’s been an increasing realization that software development and programming share a strong attraction towards automation through artificial intelligence (AI). In our current AI-driven age, models have advanced from handling simple tasks like text or image generation, all the way up to more intricate ones.

What does the future of coding look like with the prevalence of AI?

NVIDIA's prediction of coding's death manifests at Google: "More than a quarter of all new code at Google is generated by AI, then reviewed and accepted by engineers"

Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, offered intriguing perspectives on the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI), highlighting its move to a new stage where humanoid robots and autonomous vehicles are leading the charge. Huang posited that the traditional practice of coding may become obsolete due to the fast-paced advancements in AI. He considers software development and coding as potentially unstable professions for upcoming generations. Instead, he encourages exploring alternative career paths such as biology, education, manufacturing, or agriculture.

Huang’s thoughts aren’t far from accurate, considering the advent of advanced AI systems such as OpenAI-o1 and GPT-4o, which boast impressive capabilities. For example, OpenAI-o1 has demonstrated exceptional skill by scoring nearly perfectly in a coding interview for an OpenAI research engineer position.

It appears that Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman agrees with Huang on the subject. In his words, “Fast-forward 24 months from now, or some undefined period in the future, there’s a strong chance that most programmers won’t be writing code.” This is according to Mr. Garman.

Interestingly, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai admitted that the code generated using AI needs to be double-checked and accepted by actual engineers, potentially indicating that the tech is seemingly half-baked and could be prone to mistakes. Coincidentally, recent Claude AI demos shared by Anthropic showed the chatbot aborting a coding exercise to scroll through scenic pictures of a national park on Google. ,As AI becomes more advanced, more jobs, including banking, software development, interior design, and architecture, pile on the chopping block. Interestingly, Microsoft’s latest Work Trend Index report claimed company executives have raised concerns over a lack of talent for the vacancies in their organizations. The report also revealed that company executives won’t hire anyone without an AI aptitude, prompting “a 142x increase in LinkedIn members adding AI skills like Copilot and ChatGPT to their profiles.”

Those impacted by the AI-led takeover of jobs in various sectors aren’t happy about the transitions. A game designer shared that numerous gaming studios are adopting AI for game development, yet they still require human developers to scrutinize and rectify errors in the code produced by AI. The developer further explained, “You essentially become the fixer of the issues AI generates.” This isn’t what initially attracted me to game creation.

While responding to the claims of AI taking over human jobs, former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati:

Perhaps certain creative roles might become obsolete. However, if the output lacks quality, one could argue that such positions may not have been necessary to begin with.

The next few years will be rocky for AI, but the outcome for developers remains to be seen.

2024-10-31 18:39

NVIDIA’s prediction of coding’s death manifests at Google: “More than a quarter of all new code at Google is generated by AI, then reviewed and accepted by engineers”

What you need to know

What does the future of coding look like with the prevalence of AI?

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