ChatGPT and generative AI will not eliminate programmers

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Think of ChatGPT as REALLY advanced Autocorrect

Autocorrect has been around since about 1993. If you're wondering if ChatGPT is gunning for your job, think about all the jobs autocorrect has eliminated... go ahead, ask ChatGPT, Google it, I'll wait. I don't know either, but the short answer is, "Yes, autocorrect may have reduced the number of people needed to proofread a manuscript, or reduced the amount of time you need to double or triple check text before hitting 'send', but realistically it has simply made writing more efficient".

ChatGPT is no different

I heard the hype about how ChatGPT will eliminate programming jobs in 5 years10 yearssomeday and thought, "well yeah, the same way that the Model-T evendually eliminated ferrier jobs when it was released in 1908". In a way, there's some truth here...in the same way that java or ruby eliminated a lot of the boilerplate and drudgery Fortran or COBOL (or assembly) programming had humans wasting time doing, it is obvious (to me) that ChatGPT will dramatically change how "programming" is done, but won't change the need for the creative input.

I read (and watched) this video ChatGPT Will Replace Programmers Within 10 Years and there are some interesting predictions. The author, however, hides some details that are obvious (to me) that he glosses over with extremem predjudice (presumably in the interest of clickbait, which I don't fault him for, after all I'm doing the same thing). In his example he writes and agent that creates and agent that can generate Python code to solve programming problems. More specifically, he writes an AI model that can write and AI model that will generate code in python. I was left scratching my head wondering "but to write the model, you had to have the creative inspiration to write the model that writes the model...which is programming. I took a stab at building a similar system to generate 3d models of various organization structures, and I must say I was pretty impressed....however, what I discovered was lacking (the new frontier) is knowing how to hack the model to interpret what I really wanted. This is actually REALLY, MIND WRENCHINGLY difficult. While the end result is pretty impressive (it could generate pretty impressive heirarchies with fairly limited inputs) but I had to significantly change how I approached solving the problem.

Sure, programming as we know it definitely going to change

I sure hope so, the insane amount of human time and effort wasted to solved already solved problems is crazy, but my prediction is that AI is going to create MORE programming jobs (though maybe we'll call it something different). Sure, the market for folks to create horseshoes and scoop horse manure from the street is MUCH smaller than it was in 1850, but, now the people who would have done those jobs are doing something else...Programming is no different, sure, the number of folks who can build a spring starter app (by copy/pasting code from stackoverflow) will go down, but the number of people who can build a new GPT model to generate a user interface that appeals to golfers is going to grow.

Who should worry?

I DO think there are certain areas that will be eliminated outright.

  • Programming jobs that copy/paste boilerplate from stackoverflow. There are millions of "programming" jobs that are essentially completely interchangable with what you can train an AI model to do better/faster/just as reliably as a human. Hopefully those will be gone in 10 years (I'm somewhat optimistic, but a guy can dream).
  • Simlarly, what I call "non-creative, technical jobs" will go away. changing a User interface from one template to another or upgrading code from one api to another will become trivial. It's much easier and more effecient to have an AI do this than a human.

What SHOULD businesses do

Businesses will be most impacted when they adopt the stance of AI as an assistant to make a human more effective. Driving down costs by thinking human effort can be eliminated is a pipe dream...put another way, thinking you can save a nickle in your customer service costs by spending a dollar on generative AI technology is a fool's errand. Focus on "how can I use this to make my business BETTER, not how can I make my operations CHEAPER?" I've lived through multiple generations of companies so focused on the bottom line they lose site of the real opportunities to win with this shiney new technology.

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