{"id":10922,"date":"2023-03-16T11:44:13","date_gmt":"2023-03-16T11:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/techandbiz.com.ng\/tab-backup\/?p=10922"},"modified":"2023-03-16T11:45:04","modified_gmt":"2023-03-16T11:45:04","slug":"will-ai-replace-software-developers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techandbiz.com.ng\/tab-backup\/2023\/03\/16\/will-ai-replace-software-developers\/","title":{"rendered":"Will AI replace software developers?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Since its launch in November last year, the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT has had a massive impact in just a few short months. Already, some schools have banned<\/a> it as students quickly employed the bot to take shortcuts in their schoolwork, while debates rage on whether the bot will<\/a> or won\u2019t <\/a>replace copywriters. It can also write code \u2013 so well, in fact, that when Google fed<\/a> it a series of coding interview questions, its answers would have qualified it for an entry-level engineering position with annual compensation of USD$183,000.<\/p>\n

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But Sa\u0161a Slankamenac, Architect at <\/em><\/strong>Dariel Software<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, doesn\u2019t agree with the <\/em><\/strong>fears<\/em><\/strong><\/a> that AI will replace software developers. \u201cIn my view, AI is not coming for anyone\u2019s job. These concerns crop up with every major new technology that\u2019s released, and while these technologies may change and shape the world we live in, it doesn\u2019t completely replace it.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Exactly what these changes will be and when they\u2019ll take place is not quite clear at this point, he says. \u201cChatGPT is now roughly where Google was in 1999 \u2013 most people vaguely understood there was this thing called the internet and that it had value, but it wasn\u2019t widely adopted and commercialised yet. Right now, people are still trying different experiments to test AI technology like ChatGPT\u2019s commercial value. Something will undoubtedly emerge that drives widespread adoption, but it hasn\u2019t quite reached that stage yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Still, he says, it\u2019s much more likely to enhance human jobs and industries than to destroy it. \u201cAI is a generalist, not a specialist. It can only do what it\u2019s been taught to do by a human. So, wherever AI is applied to meet the needs of a specific enterprise, a human will have to \u2018train\u2019 it to do the job. Problems are not generic, they\u2019re bespoke.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Take ChatGPT and copywriting as an example. It\u2019s very efficient at writing ubiquitous copy such as automatic email replies, and doing so in a very average manner by using the common denominator of all the copy it\u2019s been fed. As soon as you need creativity or a niche type of copy \u2013 say, a personal letter to your grandmother – it\u2019s not very good. \u201cYou could, however, train it to write a specific type of niche copy and solve a bespoke problem. But you still need a human to train it,\u201d explains Slankamenac.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis means it will likely replace repetitive tasks, freeing up humans\u2019 time to focus on other things. In the software development sphere, machine learning can increase development speed by automatically testing software at every stage, for example. Testing that normally takes hours of hand coding could be done in just a few minutes. That developer\u2019s job will change, yes, but they\u2019ll get to focus more on problem modelling and solving, or even building new AI models to solve those problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

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And therein lies the caveat \u2013 those who don\u2019t keep up with these changes could indeed lose their jobs, he says. \u201cThe software development industry always rewards those who are willing to learn new things. There\u2019s always a new tool on the way to improve the status quo. So, if you, as a developer, decide to specialise in one task and stick to it for your entire career, you will be out of a job soon \u2013 whether it\u2019s replaced by AI or something else. It\u2019s the nature of the industry. Continual learning is imperative throughout a developer\u2019s career.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The same goes for companies, he adds. \u201cTechnical debt only increases over time. The longer upskilling goes unaddressed, the sooner you\u2019ll get stuck paying high costs in migration, hiring, or massive training efforts that could take months. Companies need to make sure they keep up with incremental upskilling, which will pay dividends in the long run.\u201d<\/p>\n

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With the right mindset, AI is a powerful tool for software developers to enhance their craft. And while it will reshape software development and force developers to acquire new skills, it’s unlikely to replace them anytime soon, concludes Slankamenac. \u201cThe future of software development will require developers to have a growth mindset, continually learning and upskilling to stay relevant in a rapidly changing industry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0   Since its launch in November last year, the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT has had a massive impact in just a few short months. Already, some schools have banned it as students quickly employed the bot to take shortcuts in their schoolwork, while debates rage on whether the bot will or won\u2019t replace copywriters. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,366,329,324,73,322,442],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-economy","category-education","category-investments","category-news","category-opinion","category-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techandbiz.com.ng\/tab-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techandbiz.com.ng\/tab-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techandbiz.com.ng\/tab-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techandbiz.com.ng\/tab-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techandbiz.com.ng\/tab-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/techandbiz.com.ng\/tab-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techandbiz.com.ng\/tab-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techandbiz.com.ng\/tab-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techandbiz.com.ng\/tab-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techandbiz.com.ng\/tab-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}