Jack Dorsey Tells Andrew Yang: 'AI is Coming For Programming Jobs'

Opinion?

"In November, the Brookings Institute released a report showing that artificial intelligence will increasingly jeopardize “white collar” jobs.

“Our analysis shows that workers with graduate or professional degrees will be almost four times as exposed to AI as workers with just a high school degree. Holders of bachelor’s degrees will be the most exposed by education level, more than five times as exposed to AI than workers with just a high school degree,” the Brookings Institute paper says.

The Brookings Institute report ranked professions by their relative exposure to artificial intelligence, and computer programmers were the third most exposed occupation listed, behind market research analysts and sales managers."

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/22/jac...rdize-entry-level-software-engineer-jobs.html

I have to admit, I'm not terribly concerned about all this automation job loss stuff. At least not in the short to medium term, or even the longer term. In the very long term, yes, but we are not there yet.

Let me give an example of an industry I used to work making equipment for, Analytical Chemistry.

Back in the 80's and 90's it was labor intensive to do HPLC lab analysis of chemical samples. Manual injections, reading charts and graphs. Some even quantified results by cutting out printed chart graphs and weighing them to get the area under the curve. Others packed their own gravity fed columns. Since then automated equipment has taken over. It hasn't eliminated the Analytical Chemist at all. In fact there are many more of them working today than there were back then.

Eliminating a lot of the simpler work and replacing it with automated machines has allowed an analytical chemist to set up a machine with an autosampler and configure it to run overnight, and run several pieces of equipment at once, literally multiplying the work output of a simple analytical chemist hundreds of times. Chemists can now focus more on the more intellectual work of method development, and other things, and less on the busy work than they used to, making their jobs more interesting as well.

This has dropped the cost and feasibility of doing mass chemical analysis, causing it to be used in many more places than it previously was, literally enabling the creation of the modern biotech and pharmaceutical industry, and increasing the demand for chemists, not decreasing it.

There may come a day when AI can completely replace all aspects of a human software developer, but that is still a long ways off. No doubt these developments will change the work of software developers a lot, making a single software developer able to output way more work than one could before, but more likely than not, this will mean software will become cheaper, and used in many more places than it is today, driving up demand.

While I don't foresee mass software developer unemployment any time soon, some software developers may still not like this change. It will likely mean much less time spent actually code, and much more time spent in actual real software design, defining user needs, coming up with and documenting the architecture, figuring out what each module should do and how it will interact with other modules, validating and testing, etc. (which, honestly, if you are doing software development right, should be a much, much larger portion of the job than just the writing of the code, even today). A lot of programmers like to bypass all of this work and get straight down to writing the code. These programmers will likely be disappointed in this AI future, but you can't win 'em all.

So I believe this will change the way software development works, and change the work of code monkeys into being actual software engineers, who design the software, not just code it. And I believe that as a result, demand will go way up, not down.

In a sense, yes it's true. A lot of effort goes into making programs do complex things we can do simply now with DL, but I think these people are going to be displaced and not replaced. Anyways, programming skills are highly transferrable so I don't think it's a big issue.

Uh huh... It's Twitter. I bet you could build an "AI" framework to automate everything the sum of their entire enterprise stack does.

In general, i appreciate Dorsey's enthusiasm for bringing the future into the current day picture ... but his vision laid out in the article is so far ahead (and different) to the reality at ground level in most organizations that it's laughable to any of us software engineers who deal with it on a daily basis.

Edit: That report is basing their "research" off degree levels. That's dumb. In my almost 6 years now as a software developer in the Finance and Insurance industries, my SE degree was nothing more than a ticket in the front door. As we say: garbage in, garbage out.

We, skilled laborers, will be some of the last to be replaced. Instead the boring parts of our jobs will be automated but the actual mental gymnastics that we, humans, are best at will not be replaced for a long, long time.

AI, and technology in general, ever increasingly reduces the number of people required to produce the same work.
Perhaps not as quickly as the study concludes, but over time AI will supplant or reduce the people needed for many white collar jobs. Especially the entry level ones. I could see legal teams being among the first to really feel the pinch. Legal research done in 15 minutes by algorithms instead of hundreds of man hours by interns, and aides, while producing far more complete results needing only tens of man hours to sift through is likely not that far off. It will of course go further.

Going to be honest, I have long believed the service industry, land ownership, and being the people that maintain the machines, are going to eventually end up the primary means of wealth generation for those not already in the top 2-3%. I will find out if it is really going that way or not in my last 20 years I suppose.

its all a simulation anyway.
who cares.

What will journos do know?

gigatexal said:

We, skilled laborers, will be some of the last to be replaced. Instead the boring parts of our jobs will be automated but the actual mental gymnastics that we, humans, are best at will not be replaced for a long, long time.

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As I sit here, bumping up against 40, it's surreal to think that my job is safer than the engineers upstairs. We're entirely too close to custom for each job to every automate even 1% of our work. So I'll be safe until the owners retire or sell the company, and probably after that as well.

Good, the more automation the better. So people can actually focus on what matters, instead of being used as biorobots in menial full time occupations.

Is it really that different than exporting work to countries with lower wage scales to do programming work? Or bringing in h1bs to do the jpbs here for cheaper? White collar programming jobs have been under attack

Not in my lifetime but maybe one day.
All the cheap code that places pay for at a cheap rate just for others to come in with mountains of rewrites and technical debt on the table is exhausting.
If only big business were smarter; long term over short... Job security I guess.

TurboGLH said:

As I sit here, bumping up against 40, it's surreal to think that my job is safer than the engineers upstairs. We're entirely too close to custom for each job to every automate even 1% of our work. So I'll be safe until the owners retire or sell the company, and probably after that as well.

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Not sure exactly what your skill is, but several years ago I was working for a company that made various cutting blades. A large never of them had been automated on various CNC setups. There were a minority though which just could not be done on CNC and had to be hand machined.

We wound up having to discontinue a large number of blades which our customers were clamoring for and were very profitable because we just could not find skilled machinists anymore.

The old school machinists were retiring, and none of the young kids entering the field wanted to do anything by hand. To them it was a about CNC.

And this was like 15 years ago.

Coding jobs aren't going away, but you will need to know your way around whatever these new tools are now.

Much like you are currently expected to understand IDEs, Static Analysis tools, and SMP-aware operating systems. You didn't need toi understand ANY of thaty 20 yeaars ago!

In ten years, we will just add new AI tools too the college courses, and after ten more, they'll be industry standards!

And also, some groups at my defense contrator are pushing to use AI-driven algothrims for coming projects - not ceertain if they will make any headway, burt we shall see!!

sfsuphysics said:

Is it really that different than exporting work to countries with lower wage scales to do programming work? Or bringing in h1bs to do the jpbs here for cheaper? White collar programming jobs have been under attack

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that’s the canary in the coal mine I think, the lower skill or rote white collar work that is already outsourced would be AI’s first target. Expect India’s middle class to be decimated as the first sign before it hits the more experienced engineers in the US.

Paying crap salaries to anyone on visa hostage has always and will always be a thing on an unrelated note.

Zarathustra[H] said:

Not sure exactly what your skill is, but several years ago I was working for a company that made various cutting blades. A large never of them had been automated on various CNC setups. There were a minority though which just could not be done on CNC and had to be hand machined.

We wound up having to discontinue a large number of blades which our customers were clamoring for and were very profitable because we just could not find skilled machinists anymore.

The old school machinists were retiring, and none of the young kids entering the field wanted to do anything by hand. To them it was a about CNC.

And this was like 15 years ago.

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I started out on gas turbines for industrial use, power generation and such. I've been building high speed/high power dynos for the last 6 years, mostly for testing helicopter gas turbines or large marine diesels.

We do various amounts customization for each customer, so each job is different from the last. There's zero room for automation in the assembly process, but obviously all the parts are made using CNC whenever possible.

I have seen what AI is capable of right now.
If it is going to replace programming and computer science jobs, it isn't going to happen for at least another 10-15 years, minimum.

AI has to be trained, regardless of the processing capabilities, and training it can be a slow PIA.
It is definitely getting better, but it has a long way to go.

For now, it seems like it is becoming a boon to programmers and developers with AI-assisted tools and programs, but it still requires a majority of human interaction to be fully optimized and even remotely efficient.

Dude, with existing libraries, frameworks, and getting started samples, there is already too little to write on your own. And when you do code you're just writing stuff 100's or more have already done. Anything 'unique' is just your software's particular plumbing arrangement.

The future of programming is just writing tests to define the results you want. Let AI take care of making efficient plumbing.

SecretStash said:

Dude, with existing libraries, frameworks, and getting started samples, there is already too little to write on your own. And when you're code you're just writing stuff 100's or more have already done. Anything 'unique' is just your software's particular plumbing arrangement.

The future of programming is just writing tests to define the results you want. Let AI take care of making efficient plumbing.

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Depends, for 99% of webcode and "business" code defined at a high level, sure that's true - it's already a largely bloated and incomprehensible mess.
For actual systems and low-level code? I *highly* doubt those jobs are in any danger.

schoolslave said:

Depends, for 99% of webcode and "business" code defined at a high level, sure that's true - it's already a largely bloated and incomprehensible mess.
For actual systems and low-level code? I *highly* doubt those jobs are in any danger.

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I agree - when it is ready to replace those, it is ready to replace humanity all together.

UltraTaco said:

Well, if AI would be implemented into legal system, we might see a lot of people behind bars that shouldn't be there and vice versa..

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I'd enjoy seeing an AI/ML engine "consume" our tax code and see how many loopholes it can find.

UltraTaco said:

Well, everyone today wants to be a nurseI'm sure half of them cnt even poke a vein right. BUTCHERS!!

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ROBOTS, PLEASE FREE ME FROM THIS HELL OF NURSING

I'm actually surprised he'd go on record saying these types of things in light of New Jersey's recent requests for COBOL developers to patch up their mainframes.

Pray tell, Mr. Dorsey, can AI also handle our technical debt / legacy infrastructure looking backward?

Didn't think so.

atp1916 said:

I'm actually surprised he'd go on record saying these types of things in light of New Jersey's recent requests for COBOL developers to patch up their mainframes.

Pray tell, Mr. Dorsey, can AI also handle our technical debt / legacy infrastructure looking backward?

Didn't think so.

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With decades worth of code to learn from, seems pretty doable ?

In a lot of cases were talking about very simple code written in simple languages

The job of a programmer isn't really writing code. It's creating a program that satisfies business requirements.

Business requirements are too vague for any of this "AI" to fully automate well. There will always be a need for programmers until there's sentient AI in which case all jobs are gone. Until then programmers will always be needed and "AI" is just making programmers more efficient. Programmers in the past were using punch cards, now they're using IDEs and libraries, writing barely any code to accomplish what couldn't even be done in the past. It's getting easier every day to be a programmer.

But there's still basically unlimited demand for programmers and since there is limited capable programmers the cost is too high to do a lot of the work. As programmers efficiency increases more of the demand can be filled and more of the things that weren't worth the cost of automating will be.

Remember when water mill powered looms were going to make us all unemployed?

idiomatic said:

Remember when water mill powered looms were going to make us all unemployed?

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This is different though

Way different.

AI programming will eliminate entire teams of humans that filled studios. One AI could do all roles at same time and do them in a building space the size of a server room.

But dont worry I already plan to join the outlaw badlands militia that attacks and destroys your beloved AI gods.

Meeho said:

What will journos do know?

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Seems like Learn to Code is off the table.

Well it was either AI or H1b's I'd rather AI.

sharknice said:

The job of a programmer isn't really writing code. It's creating a program that satisfies business requirements.

Business requirements are too vague for any of this "AI" to fully automate well. There will always be a need for programmers until there's sentient AI in which case all jobs are gone. Until then programmers will always be needed and "AI" is just making programmers more efficient. Programmers in the past were using punch cards, now they're using IDEs and libraries, writing barely any code to accomplish what couldn't even be done in the past. It's getting easier every day to be a programmer.

But there's still basically unlimited demand for programmers and since there is limited capable programmers the cost is too high to do a lot of the work. As programmers efficiency increases more of the demand can be filled and more of the things that weren't worth the cost of automating will be.

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Very true, and you're probably right about the demand increasing with the ease of use.

schoolslave said:

Depends, for 99% of webcode and "business" code defined at a high level, sure that's true - it's already a largely bloated and incomprehensible mess.
For actual systems and low-level code? I *highly* doubt those jobs are in any danger.

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Agreed, low level is probably more buffered. But there is stuff to take high level languages to write low level code with a small size footprint. I think there is a python iot library. So if they get AI to get rid of need for a built in garbage collector and to compress bloat out of high level binaries, then low level loses its advantages. I mean we're already starting to do that without AI. Which reminds me, I want to learn rust

Just need the market to hold steady for engineers for the next oh.. 35 years or so.

After that, AI can have at it all "it" wants

Star Trek predicted this, have you ever seen how they program things? They talk to a computer and it generates all the code it requires and they verbally give it high level instructions and it does all the dirty work. Back in the early 2000's while I was doing my last year for software engineering we had a guest speaker in from Microsoft and they were talking about the new .Net stuff and part of it was that they one day wanted to get the language to a point where you could write code using using a normal conversation and the compiler would make it happen. New AI tech just makes this properly feasible, and I am pretty sure that the AI would be perfectly capable of working that code down to as low of a level as needed and probably make a full set of optimizations to meet the users required needs as well.

Still trying to find that AI that nVidia built to recreate Pac-Man, because I would gladly go ahead and purchase as much hardware as needed if I could create an AI that could recreate a bunch of old arcade titles and optimize them for say the Pi4 architecture or something.

Lakados said:

Star Trek predicted this, have you ever seen how they program things? They talk to a computer and it generates all the code it requires and they verbally give it high level instructions and it does all the dirty work. Back in the early 2000's while I was doing my last year for software engineering we had a guest speaker in from Microsoft and they were talking about the new .Net stuff and part of it was that they one day wanted to get the language to a point where you could write code using using a normal conversation and the compiler would make it happen. New AI tech just makes this properly feasible, and I am pretty sure that the AI would be perfectly capable of working that code down to as low of a level as needed and probably make a full set of optimizations to meet the users required needs as well.

Still trying to find that AI that nVidia built to recreate Pac-Man, because I would gladly go ahead and purchase as much hardware as needed if I could create an AI that could recreate a bunch of old arcade titles and optimize them for say the Pi4 architecture or something.

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It made a playable pac man like game, but it couldn't generate any of the details like the unique ghost behaviors. The problem with automation and "AI" is it can only do so much before you need to take over and that's already true today. The last 10% of the details take 90% of the work. And all those details take so long because there are tons of rules and unkowns around them. Eventually programming will become just telling an "AI" what to do, but that's still going to be a lot of work until full on sentience is achieved.

Zarathustra[H] said:

I have to admit, I'm not terribly concerned about all this automation job loss stuff. At least not in the short to medium term, or even the longer term. In the very long term, yes, but we are not there yet.

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I agree, but still I have to wonder what the economic landscape is going to be like when most jobs are done by AI. If you make the working man something obsolete, what do you do with the working man. Are we to eliminate money and make society purely communistic? Are we to eliminate the human condition altogether? This is actually a cliche story line for science fiction, but it's uncanny how some of these science fiction authors can actually become prophets.

Lakados said:

Star Trek predicted this, have you ever seen how they program things? They talk to a computer and it generates all the code it requires and they verbally give it high level instructions and it does all the dirty work. Back in the early 2000's while I was doing my last year for software engineering we had a guest speaker in from Microsoft and they were talking about the new .Net stuff and part of it was that they one day wanted to get the language to a point where you could write code using using a normal conversation and the compiler would make it happen. New AI tech just makes this properly feasible, and I am pretty sure that the AI would be perfectly capable of working that code down to as low of a level as needed and probably make a full set of optimizations to meet the users required needs as well.

Still trying to find that AI that nVidia built to recreate Pac-Man, because I would gladly go ahead and purchase as much hardware as needed if I could create an AI that could recreate a bunch of old arcade titles and optimize them for say the Pi4 architecture or something.

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the computer that created the holodeck programs in TNG was an amazing guesser with the 2-3 sentences given by jordie.

definitely could be done, but that would be a long conversation, verbally feeding the history of the company and its relationship in the industry, then background for the product you are developing, and what needs the new feature needs to fill, then describing the relationships with vendors and compliance and all the BS you do everyday. that leads me to believe there would be more too it, and it would completely change the way everyone works to the point where worrying about a single job is far too narrow in scope.

DirtyTeeth said:

the computer that created the holodeck programs in TNG was an amazing guesser with the 2-3 sentences given by jordie.

definitely could be done, but that would be a long conversation, verbally feeding the history of the company and its relationship in the industry, then background for the product you are developing, and what needs the new feature needs to fill, then describing the relationships with vendors and compliance and all the BS you do everyday. that leads me to believe there would be more too it, and it would completely change the way everyone works to the point where worrying about a single job is far too narrow in scope.

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Yeah it would change the work flow completely, remove 1 job create 2 more but get the job done in record time. At worst I could see this being extremely useful for rapid prototyping. Get the AI in the initial design meetings with the clients have them describe it and have the AI mock something up in real time.

Lakados said:

Yeah it would change the work flow completely, remove 1 job create 2 more but get the job done in record time. At worst I could see this being extremely useful for rapid prototyping. Get the AI in the initial design meetings with the clients have them describe it and have the AI mock something up in real time.

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wouldn't you love to see the team AI tell the client their idea makes zero sense right in the meeting? ive flipped on this issue, take my job it would be 100% worth it

Lakados said:

Yeah it would change the work flow completely, remove 1 job create 2 more but get the job done in record time. At worst I could see this being extremely useful for rapid prototyping. Get the AI in the initial design meetings with the clients have them describe it and have the AI mock something up in real time.

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That's probably more realistic. Right now, design work is time consuming. Not difficult mind you, time consuming. And there already are AIs that can convert UIs from one platform to another. I think a lot of people would be surprised at how many professional developers can't even create something harder than the simplest GUI, let alone something that has lists, tables, charts, draggable windows, etc.

And to be honest, some of it's not exactly intuitive, which leads to a lot more mistakes. And this is stuff where an AI can shine, though it will push out quite a few developers.

Nytegard said:

That's probably more realistic. Right now, design work is time consuming. Not difficult mind you, time consuming. And there already are AIs that can convert UIs from one platform to another. I think a lot of people would be surprised at how many professional developers can't even create something harder than the simplest GUI, let alone something that has lists, tables, charts, draggable windows, etc.

And to be honest, some of it's not exactly intuitive, which leads to a lot more mistakes. And this is stuff where an AI can shine, though it will push out quite a few developers.

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might be talking about something different here, but learning javascipt frameworks might be the worst roi you could do with your time. stay away from that shit, get experience or spend time learning literally anything else. just my opinion from watching other struggle.