CS Professor Sounds Alarm on AI and Programmers

In this video, we'll take a look at a few clips from a very blunt, but thoughtful, lecture that a computer science professor gave to some Harvard students.

The premise is that AI will bring about "the end of programming."

After hitting the key points of the talk, I'll provide you with 3 KEY TAKEAWAYS so that YOU can stay relevant and continue to progress forward in this quickly changing software engineering industry.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Timestamps
00:00 Intro
01:20 Where we're at now
03:15 The savings of AI replacing developers
06:08 The software team of the future
07:30 3 Key Takeaways
07:42 The industry is changing
08:27 Do NOT Stop Programming
10:05 We're just not there yet
11:50 Discussion

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[zwanzikahatzel]

In my experience "reviewing" code can take longer than writing it from scratch, depending on how complex and deeply you need to be able to understand it. If the code works and produces the right the result you might give it a quick pass, but if something doesn't work and you need to track down the root cause of the issue it might take a whole afternoon or even days. These models make so many mistakes at this stage that they are more of a nuisance than a benefit. they can be ok to quickly sketch a script or to look up commonly needed and self contained algorithmic pieces such as "sort a pair of lists by the second element" or "traverse two trees in parallel a put corresponding elements in a list of pairs". It absolutely CANNOT work with a very large system when you have to think holistically and consider subtle interactions between 100s of functions or objects. The only "programmers" who should feel threatened are the ones that produce simple amateurish code, who just glue together pieces from large libraries or stuff they find on stack overflow. If your job requires creating new interesting algorithms or unusual ways of processing and combining data, these tools wont be as helpful.

[calmhorizons]

I watched the talk in full - the presenter is a marketeer for his own AI startup, pure and simple.

[bwhit]

I’ve been using Chat GPT to make an app in a new programming language. I spend most of my time thinking about data management, UI design, and debugging. It’s no longer necessary to memorize syntax, but the subjective coding skills are still super important.

[Zvona]

I used to work various programming jobs, now work in lower corporate management for years. Coding (writing loops, functions, classes...) will be replaced to some degree with AI, but coding is only a fraction of software development. When we come to higher project levels, it becomes difficult to even describe it properly to every detail to yourself. You imagine something, try to define it, start working, review, adapt, rewrite... and you still have to know how to code, even if you don't do it directly. AI still has a long way to go before reaching that level of complexity. It will probably need General AI, but with General AI around we will have more serious problems in general than just replacing developers with AI.

[samsturdi]

Ah yes, a professor speaking authoritatively about the private sector. Classic

[TravisMedia]

Thanks everyone for the comments and discussions. I, myself, can say I've learned a lot from all the input I've read so far, positive AND negative!

[costa]

I believe we are only looking at the "happy path" of AI evolution. Some of the concerns are regarding hardware and energy consumption required to use AI at larger scales, and the quality of the training models. Eventually, AI will be trained with data generated by AI too, so this might cause unexpected results.

[lordcrekit]

As a programmer I should be thrilled for this- it's the next step in my entire field, and I could help push things further to the future. But instead I'm terrified because I don't want to starve to death. In this economy we don't get to be excited because we all starve if we don't compete, and we worked our asses off to get where we are just for it to potentially vanish.

[wbrsbbz]

I love your prespective on this, Travis. It gives me hope.

[abstractthinker]

Chat GPT taking over SWE had me concerned for a while but I am confident that if AI writes code for us then we can go on to do more complex task. If it succeeds there is going to be a huge wave of innovation in many different fields.

[rexmundi]

As a machinist, I’ve been told my whole career my job was a dead end and that robots would take it.I’m still working 30 years later but robots did take my job, sort of. Now I do the work of 5 machinists compared to when I started. But it’s been gradual. Those 4 other guys had time to retire, retrain, or grow into the new way to be a machinist. AI is different. The advances seem to be happening very quickly and it looks like no digital job is safe. It is scary to think about 20% of the digital jobs going away, and I think that’s a low %.

[coisasnatv]

I sounded the alarm in 2015 after an IBM talk about AI, everything we see now with chatgpt and everything was demonstrated in 2012, at that time they created in real time something very similar to today's Instagram by speaking, they just asked and the AI created everything, the interface, the database, the web hosting, etc. Until 2017 I worked as a translator for Netflix and other studios, to subtitle a movie it took about 5 days to time the subtitles, transcribe, verify, adjust, etc., now they do everything in less than a second. You can translate a whole page with the push of a button, you don't need a translator anymore.

At that time, the "specialists" were telling everyone not to worry about it, that it was never going to be a thing, and look where we are now. If what people are seeing NOW is what they had in 2012, imagine what they have NOW and you don't even have a clue.

[anabittenco]

I saw this talk live and was skeptical about the implications. Thank you for making this piece on the subject!

[aminfadaeinejad]

Thank Travis, great video. What skills do you think technical people should be learning these days with the growth of AI.

[Sunrise]

🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:

00:00 🌐 *The future of AI and programming suggests a shift from human-written code to instructing language models.*
03:12 🧮 *AI could significantly reduce costs, potentially replacing human developers, with a drastic cost difference.*
06:15 🏭 *The future software development team may consist of a product manager, AI code generators, and human code reviewers.*
09:30 🚀 *Learning to code remains valuable as it opens doors to new opportunities in a changing industry, with AI enhancing rather than replacing human skills.*

Made with HARPA AI

[faisalraj]

Thankyou Travis. This gave me an extra comfort in a sense, companies won't adopt AI overnight. My company still hesitant to fully transition to AWS or Azure due to Compliance issues, after all, it is the secure Data that we are dealing with here. I think, for many companies, the approach would be the HYBRID model to welcome AI enough for testing purposes. BTW I like the way you explain in your Videos. Thankyou.

[janicech]

Thank you Travis! This is something I really need to hear. It made me feel excited but worried when ChatGPT was released. I'm not sure if I am learning something that will die soon. But the only thing I know for sure is that there must be more opportunities in computer science/AI

[PeterDrinnan]

Anyone who has worked with code created "on the cheap" knows that finding and fixing the bugs is where the bulk of effort ends up being spent. Humans are good at dealing with chaos. I doubt AI will ever be able to handle chaos.

[beatrisprinz]

Do you use Python for wordpress websites to replace PHP code? Will appreciate much hearing from you. Thank you.

[rolco]

Hi, I am still learning web development. I have a question, with the existence of AI tools, do I / we still need to practice solving algorithm exercises (leetcode, etc)? Because with AI we can get quick solutions, right.. How's your thought? Thank you 😊