IBM CEO says AI will boost programmers, not replace them | Meanwhile, Anthropic CEO forecasts AI could write up to 90% of code within the next 3-6 months
https://www.techspot.com/news/107142-ibm-ceo-ai-boost-programmers-not-replace-them.html
IBM CEO says AI will boost programmers, not replace them | Meanwhile, Anthropic CEO forecasts AI could write up to 90% of code within the next 3-6 months
https://www.techspot.com/news/107142-ibm-ceo-ai-boost-programmers-not-replace-them.html
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From the article: The role of AI in the future of programming has become a hot topic among tech industry leaders. During a recent interview at the SXSW conference, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna weighed in on the debate, asserting that AI will not replace programmers anytime soon. Instead, he believes AI will serve as a powerful tool to enhance their productivity, enabling developers to work more efficiently.
Krishna estimates that AI could write 20 – 30 percent of code but emphasizes that its role in more complex tasks will remain minimal.
His views contrast with more optimistic predictions from other industry leaders. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, has forecast that AI could generate up to 90 percent of code within the next three to six months. Meanwhile, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has suggested that his company may stop hiring traditional engineers by 2025 due to AI-driven productivity gains.
However, Benioff also underscores the importance of human expertise and is actively reskilling Salesforce’s workforce to collaborate effectively with AI tools.
Krishna’s perspective aligns more closely with Benioff’s, emphasizing that AI will enhance productivity rather than eliminate programming jobs. He explained, “If you can produce 30 percent more code with the same number of people, are you going to get more code written or less?” Krishna believes this increased efficiency will drive market share gains and fuel the development of new products.
As a company deeply invested in AI-powered solutions, IBM has positioned AI as a complementary tool rather than a replacement for human programmers. While Krishna has previously mentioned pausing hiring in back-office roles that AI could automate, he now underscores AI’s augmentative role in creative and technical fields.
3-6 months? Anyone working in a company with a semi large software development department and has experienced turn around times knows this is absolute marketing bullshit.
And pigs could fly. He’s not wrong in a universe of infinite possibilities that might happen but anyone using ai to write enterprise software without a human is in for a rude awakening. This is part of the hype bubble they keep ramming down our throats that we NEED their software or we’ll be left behind! Just like we needed NFTs, or beanie babies. Tech always oversells what it can do to make as much money before it’s replaced or users green onto the real limitations aren’t what they’ve been sold. It’s one of the oldest cons in capitalism.
And yet there is no reason to believe the IBM CEO when you realize that they want to cut costs wherever. So that boost will likely come with reduced headcount and then the question of “Where do we find qualified people” will start showing up.
Claude 3.7 is getting pretty good at writing these short blocks of code, it is when tasked with architecting larger systems that it does more harm than good.
One can imagine that AI is useful for building the bricks and we just need programmers to be the bricklayers. But a key point about software development is that it is not very much like brick laying.
Yeah, IBM CEO says whatever. He has a lot of developers he wants to keep until he doesn’t need them anymore and also he doesn’t have much idea from the sideline. (Yep, you can also say that Dario Amadei is just overselling his company.) He is not risking much, he’ll just have a very interesting managerial task at hand.
What I’m not sure about is whether we’ll still generate as much software if we have AI capable of doing the job of most software developers. Or rather, how long that period will last before others (non-developers) get replaced and thus the world might need a *lot less* software, because all the people who use them now will be out of their jobs anyway (and the current systems will be either driven by AI or replaced with simpler ones as they won’t need to adapt to humans).
IBM being the voice of reason….didn’t see that one coming
Its quite plausible that AI produces 90% of code, but who is it that says the ai what to do – thats the part where programmers are comming in and are still employed. Just their toolbox got extended.
IBM is correct – AI and tools with AI will unleash star developers to be even more prolific and impactful. Rather then needing ten devs for something, you could get by with 5, for example.
Some companies will lay off the remaining five, others will use those resources to tackle more projects.
Humans will always be in the loop (u need someone to blame if somethings goes wrong) but the team size will be reduced, people have to generalize across various domains, ai fails as what it do is pattern matching we need someone to steer it right. Less salary for same amount of work.