The possibility that one day computers will eventually write their own code is becoming more and more real. The more time passes the more frightening artificially intelligent programs are becoming for programmers, who will no longer be needed in the near future since their job will be easily replaced by artificially intelligent programs that will take over by writing, copying, improving, etc. their own code.
“I can envision systems that become better and better at writing software,” according to Bart Selman, a computer scientist at Cornell University. “A person complemented with an intelligent system can write maybe ten times as much code, maybe a hundred times as much code. The problem then becomes you need a hundred times fewer human programmers,” Selman added.
As Selman said, fewer and fewer programmers will be needed, which in one hand will become very useful for many companies that are having problems finding the right number of professional programmers (which is a real problem nowadays,) but on the other hand will be a nightmare for those programmers who have dedicated their life to programming and will have problems finding a job, since lesser and lesser programmers will be needed with time.
According to a 2013 Oxford study, the estimated percent of automated software engineers in the next 20 years, is only 8%, which according to Selman is not possible, as he expects that percentage to be much bigger. “While it is evident that computers are entering the domains of science and engineering, our predictions implicitly suggest strong complementarities between computers and labour in creative science and engineering occupations; although it is possible that computers will fully substitute for workers in these occupations over the long-run,” the study by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne says.
According to Tech Insider, ‘some AI systems, especially those using a methodology called machine learning that allows AI to improve over time, will get better and faster than humans at writing software.’ But even though for the moment, software engineer’s job looks pretty safe, in the next years everything might change. National Information and Communications Technology Australia artificial intelligence professor Toby Walsh said for Tech Insider that no matter how much worse the numbers look so far, they might eventually be even worse. “It's hard to think of a job that a computer ultimately won't be able to do as well if not better than we can do.”
One thing we know for sure, the future isn’t looking that bright for any job position in the near future, since more and more machines are replacing human kind. The same study by Oxford indicated that by 2030, ‘47% of all employment in the US is likely to be automated,’ while other studies show that some particular job positions will not only be automated, but will very soon disappear.
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