Somebody tweeted the other day “Yesterday was a great year in AI”. Given the rate of progress we are making in this field, it truly feels overwhelming. Ever since Chat GPT started helping people generate code, the raging debate going on is will Chat GPT will replace programming jobs? Here’s my take:
Chat GPT has already lowered the entry barrier for programming and will eventually commoditize it such that anyone will be able to build a piece of software, just how, currently anyone can write a blog post without coding. While it is hard to predict a timeline, in the long term (~10 years), Chat GPT/AI may replace most programming jobs.
I actually think the timeline for the technology would be way faster, but the speed of adoption of this tech by workforces across the world would be much slower. The technology for automating most low level programming jobs may exist for years before it becomes the norm in most companies to leverage it.
With regards to the actual improvement in AI for software development tasks or in general, as I said, it is hard to predict because the growth is exponential. As humans, exponential growth curves are really hard to think about. I believe we are just now seeing a lift-off in AI intelligence capabilities (base of the exponential curve) and the world will look very different every 6 months from now.
The Era of The 100x Engineer.
A year ago, if you asked me what would be the best skill for a 14 year old to learn for the future, I would’ve said programming.
Now, I say prompt engineering AND programming.
Learning programming the hard way may not be necessary anymore (as long as you understand how things work). Instead the best approach today would be to:
- Build projects with GPT and other LLM APIs.
- Use Github co-pilot and Chat GPT as your coding assistants to learn faster.
- Understand how to extract the best value from these tools with ‘prompt engineering’
For those already in the Industry, these tools offer a way to be WAY better engineers than they already are. Just like ’60 is the new 40′ was popularized when humans started ageing better over the last 30 years, 100x engineers will be the new 10x engineers.
Yes, many jobs will be automated.
But, on the flip side, think of how many new jobs will be created because there is an excess of productivity in the market and SO many more unmet problems that currently aren’t being solved for.
How Entrepreneurs and Executives Should Think About AI and Automation
Really- what does this mean for companies? How can business owners and executives be ready?
I believe there should at least be one person from each department in every company looking into automating the department’s work with existing tools.
As I’ve found in just 4 months of building automations for myself, a mind-boggling amount of work can be automated by combining no-code tools with AI (maybe I should start offering that as a service to businesses…)
No-code tools can be used by anyone and AI integration part requires a little technical know-how, as of now.
That too, will soon be removed very soon as Open AI is releasing a plugin environment which allows you to build applications by writing a document in English, describing what you want- the rest is taken care of by the GPT engine (I will cover this in more detail in an upcoming post soon).
Why You Should Take Action Today
Companies that start experimenting with AI and automating today, will be massively ahead of the curve. The first movers have already started over the past 3 months. Another 3-6 months, and things will become much more commonplace. Give it a year, and this will be properly mainstream- which is when most people would be waking up to this phenomenon.
Imagine the kind of headstart your organization would have, if you start now?
If you’re an employee- imagine the kind of productivity gains you would have in a year’s time if you started now?
Anyway, that’s all for today- hope you found this useful.
Talk soon,
Shubhankar