Will Ai Kill Coding?

With all the talk about Ai (artificial intelligence,) people are wondering if Ai will rush in, making human coders obsolete. Short answer: maybe in 25-50 yrs!

Ai is slowly being developed, but there is a way to go! Though true Ai will take a while before it is realized. As it develops, you will start seeing the simple jobs replaced by Ai long before it finally gets to coders.

The 3 Categories of Ai

The scientist have divided Ai into three categories:

1. Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI)
2. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
3. Artificial Superintelligence (ASI)

Today we have lots of examples of ANI Ai: Siri, Google search and self driving cars. This type of Ai can only do a few simple things. A long way off from coding!

The second type of Ai (AGI) is what will eventually replace human coders. AGi can think, learn, plan ahead and communicate. When that happens, Ai will replace all jobs, not just coders.

Coders need to Communicate with Clients

Coding has a lot to do with being able to communicate with humans, since you have to speak with people to figure out what they want in their websites (or apps) that you are building. That’s one thing new coders/developers often overlook – the importance of being able to interact with people. Good social skills is a big part of being a great coder.

Of all the skills that Ai will have to learn, the nuances of human communication will be the most difficult. So long before Ai will start coding, it will replace construction workers, truck drivers, accountants, maintenance workers and many other jobs.

… Ai represents a huge change in our society and likely our culture. Nobody can say with certainty how it will all play out. But what is clear, is that the simple tasks will be replaced with Ai before coding … given how complex coding can be.

Legal Considerations

Some of the world’s smartest people are sounding the alarm bells about the birth of Ai, this includes people like Bill Gates, Elon Musk

and Stephen Hawking. I think as we get closer to true Ai (Artificial General Intelligence – AGI) rules and restrictions will be put into place and Ai will likely be tightly controlled. This will further slow the adoption of full Ai in any field. So this will further slow the replacement of live coders with Ai.

Ai will change the Role of Coders

As primitive Ai begins to come online over the next 20yrs, you will first see Ai change the role of coders/developers. So as we use frameworks and code libraries (ex: jQuery, Bootstrap) to speed up development today, primitive Ai will slowly works its’ way into development in an assistive role. Instead of replacing coders outright, Ai will merely allow us more freedom to work on the higher level conceptual aspects of an app.

… Sounds good to me!

Finally, given all the experts seem to think true Ai will only be invented in 50 yrs, I wouldn’t be too concerned. In fact, the fabric of society will change radically (due to Ai) long before coders/developers will be replaced.

Thanks for reading!

Stefan Mischook