AI Taking Over the World

 

When ChatGPT debuted in 2022, there was a lot of buzz about how jobs are soon going to be replaced by AI. How long do we have until we, humans, become obsolete at work? Which jobs will go out first? Admittedly, I felt a hint of panic when I came across these questions.

Nowadays, everywhere you go, you here about AI. Everything is powered by AI - chatbots, social media, online shopping, text and editing, advertising, healthcare, business and analytics, transportation, and so much more. And yes, definitely in software engineering and programming! 

When I joined JFokus, an annual Java conference held in Stockholm, last February, almost all sessions were related to, if not based on, AI. One of the questions that often came up in and out of the sessions was that, will programmers be replaced by AI? 😱

I use GitHub Copilot when I do my work. Thank you Z for this! It is super helpful. I started typing out some codes and voila!, copilot will provide the rest. I just need to press tab, and my code is done. Well, mostly anyway 😅. What I love about copilot is that when I needed to write test cases, it would give me the test scenarios I would need. Oftentimes, I would say, "Oh, that's a good one! Haven't thought about that!".

Of course, one would still need to review what copilot has suggested. A lot of times, I still need to fix the logic. After all, these lines are just suggestions from copilot, and does not really have the background of the requirements. There are times that I have to change the syntax since the code it provided didn't run. What I do notice though, is that copilot is getting better and better with providing these suggestions. 

So will it, or any AI-powered tool, replace me soon? I would say, as a developer, AI still has a bit of a long way until it gets it right. As of now, my skills are still needed to fix those logic and syntax issues. But definitely, it will replace me at some point.

Am I scared? Well, no. AI is supposed to help out with the mundane tasks. If I get replaced by AI then that means I'm doing something not worth doing anymore. What encourages me is that I can do other things far more important than just looking at syntax errors and scratching my head where I failed.

So if you're scared if AI will replace you, then maybe it's a good time to reflect what you're doing and where you are right now. Retool, learn new things, explore! Don't let AI scare you, let it support you. The human brain can do so many wonderful things if used.

So how about you?