No, Chat GPT/AI won't replace Software Engineers

[Juhku]

There's been quite a lot of hype in the AI space for the past few months, leading to an existential crisis for many in the tech industry. Even discussions regarding tech space layoffs have taken here, at BHW.

Saw a good and short video on the topic by this Norwegian gentleman;

If you are in the tech space, I'd highly recommend you watch the video.
Now, take a deep breath and don't worry - there'll always be a demand for skilled workers.

 

[Dopious]

I think customers will trust a coder more than an AI as for now.

 

[Juhku]

I think customers will trust a coder more than an AI as for now.

Surely.
I'm not exactly sure how things are structured for Software Developers/Engineers outside Finland, but here coders usually tend to do more customer service work than actual coding.
Especially when a Finnish coder gets paid on a commission basis, a single coder pretty much answers for customer service, coding, testing and anything in between. Those who don't work on a commission basis and don't do much customer service, still spend a pretty hefty amount of their time in meetings and collaboratively working with the whole team of coders.

I can't say how the tech space culture is outside of Finland, but I can't even imagine an AI replacing anyone in the tech space in Finland due to how our work culture is structured.

 

[potah]

For now...
I dont know 5 years from now. It's crazy how AI evolve. Every week, not month

 

[Gogol]

I have not seen the video yet, but I think the same as the title. All AI is doing is hallucinating already known answers. Irl, when you code, often times you face situations that isn’t discussed in the internet that much. AI completely fails in those cases. Also note the fact that AI doesn’t care about time/space complexity while providing you with answers. So, even if the code given by it works, it may not be the best way to do it. If you are completely relying on ai and you dunno what you are doing, most of the times you will end up with crappy results. No serious business would like to do that.

 

[OccultKingdoms]

For now...
I dont know 5 years from now. It's crazy how AI evolve. Every week, not month

AI has been there for about 70 years. It just became mainstream because of recent implementations of transformers.

 

[Vikjohn]

No way an AI will replace software developers, AI can't even do critical think which is very important in Software dev

 

[The14thDoctor]

I agree with the video but for small staff like forms and even university assignments works fine I'm not a programmer myself but when i need something i use chatgtp but i modify the content a little in my own way. but chatgtp i believe you all agree that its a masterpiece in many fields.

 

[AllOutAnime]

Everybody saying this doesn‘t have a huge impact is just closing their eyes and denying the truth.
Sure AI cannot do anything by its own right now.
Somebody that does not know how to code will not be able to use it.

But somebody that knows how to code will be much more productive.
Now a single senior developer can replace a whole team.

Not in every niche but in programming 90% is just standard work and GPT-4 will do an excellent job if instructed properly.

 

[OccultKingdoms]

Everybody saying this doesn‘t have a huge impact is just closing their eyes and denying the truth.
Sure AI cannot do anything by its own right now.
Somebody that does not know how to code will not be able to use it.

But somebody that knows how to code will be much more productive.
Now a single senior developer can replace a whole team.

Not in every niche but in programming 90% is just standard work and GPT-4 will do an excellent job if instructed properly.

What are your results? Team of devs is usually two or three people. Most teams are in small and medium size companies. Most of us will never see large codebases.

We usually go with pair programming or something similar and chat GPT-4 won't replace second programmer in a team of two.

It will just make you write code twice as fast, but that's only about writing, not thinking.

Sometimes it's not even worth to prompt it cause it will be faster to copy existing piece of code and edit it in 2 minutes.

 

[Juhku]

I have not seen the video yet, but I think the same as the title. All AI is doing is hallucinating already known answers. Irl, when you code, often times you face situations that isn’t discussed in the internet that much. AI completely fails in those cases. Also note the fact that AI doesn’t care about time/space complexity while providing you with answers. So, even if the code given by it works, it may not be the best way to do it. If you are completely relying on ai and you dunno what you are doing, most of the times you will end up with crappy results. No serious business would like to do that.

Exactly. I completely agree with you.

The more I get myself into the tech space, the more I understand that each company has their own ways about things.

Some companies (especially big ones) have fairly strict policies when it comes to formatting and how the code should be structured. You can't have dozens of coders producing code with their own ways. Having a policy regarding formatting helps everyone to understand all the code in the long run.
Like you said, AI doesn't always produce the best code. It produces its interpretation of what it has learned elsewhere.
Unless the AI has been trained with a dataset from a specific company's code, it can't follow a company's policies how a certain piece of code should be formatted/structured.

This case is only one flaw out of the hundreds, that the AI would need to get right before replacing anyones' jobs.

I don't personally see AI replacing absolutely anyone in a long time.
I believe the best use case for Chat GPT at the moment is education for 'non-life threatening' subjects. I surely wouldn't want my future doctor to graduate with the help of Chat GPT / other chatbots.

 

[AllOutAnime]

What are your results? Team of devs is usually two or three people. Most teams are in small and medium size companies. Most of us will never see large codebases.

We usually go with pair programming or something similar and chat GPT-4 won't replace second programmer in a team of two.

It will just make you write code twice as fast, but that's only about writing, not thinking.

Sometimes it's not even worth to prompt it cause it will be faster to copy existing piece of code and edit it in 2 minutes.

GPT-4 replaces thinking in many cases. You just prompt what you need and ask for an explanation how it would execute. Then you go with that and when everything is good you let it write the code.

Even in large code bases, not all code is fully connected if it follows best practices. GPT-4 just needs to know all code that directly works together to produce great results.

 

[thescrrr]

Then software engineers will replace chat gpt?

 

[Gogol]

Unless the AI has been trained with a dataset from a specific company's code, it can't follow a company's policies how a certain piece of code should be formatted/structured.

Yepp and this is an excellent use case for the big techs. They can take those transformers and apply them to learn from their existing codebase. That might help them to get rid of some of the elementary programmers.

Another product I really enjoy using is github copilot. It obviously cannot do everything for me, but it does really well with repetitive patterns like lets say a useEffect in a react functional component. It makes life a lot easier.

 

[joseph15]

This is a bit of copium.. Sure, those jobs may not be threatened right now, but I think it's silly to assume that in 5, 10, 15 years, a lot of these lower and mid-level coding jobs won't disappear (along with a ton of lower-level jobs in every industry). AI technology will evolve faster than any other technology in human history.

The only thing that can stop AI from effectively killing millions of jobs is government intervention and policies that do not allow companies to fully automate these tasks. But why would the government want to intervene?

 

[Redditools]

I think even if the AI can code Software Engineers will still be needed because it's just simple:

"Who is more capable using a AI for coding? A Software Engineer of someone that does not knows to code or can code but don't code very well"

AI will be a tool not a replaced, it will speed up projects and make things easier for Engineers, programmers and coders in General without talking about the rest of work-niches.

 

[HustleTong]

At least that's the case for now
If they create a fine-tuned version for coding alone, things will be radically different

 

[seoworld983]

AI can't replace Techies but it will give good strong fight.

 

[Universe0]

I own a software agency and we already stopped outsourcing dev stuff.

We mainly use chatgpt for development and scripting instead of upwork or similar platforms and have reduced our expenses.

At least for us we have seen that AI is the future for programming.

 

[CheapestContent]

Not everyone completely trusts AI. So software engineers are not replaceable.