There are endless scare stories all over the news regarding artificial intelligence (AI) models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. They’re only going to get more powerful, and will soon take over most people’s work, leaving us all jobless. You would not be crazy to be worried about losing your job — especially if you work in IT or you’re a programmer.
So, will ChatGPT replace programmers? Maybe eventually AI will replace programmers, particularly for certain tasks. But you don’t need to start classes to get a plumbing license just yet!
Most programmers and techies that use ChatGPT as a programming buddy (particularly GPT 4) find that it streamlines the most boring tasks and makes them much, much more productive.
Will ChatGPT Replace Programmers?
If you’ve been worried that ChatGPT and other AI services like it are going to put you out of a job in the near future, then you are not alone. The media has been ringing the bell for the last few months, and after you play with ChatGPT 4 for a while… you can see why!
In fact, in a recent viral report by investment bank Goldman Sachs, which was written by Joseph Briggs and Devesh Kodnani, it was predicted that up to 300 million jobs will be replaced by LLM tools like ChatGPT.
No big deal, just 300 million jobs.
Generative AI is the type of artificial intelligence that is able to generate text, code, audio, images, video, and music, and can even interpret and manipulate existing information and data. Therefore, it’s no surprise that many are worried that they will soon be out of work, including programmers.
In a recent viral report by investment bank Goldman Sachs, which was written by Joseph Briggs and Devesh Kodnani, it was predicted that up to 300 million jobs will be replaced by generative AI tools like ChatGPT.
Generative AI is the type of artificial intelligence that can produce text in response to text prompts by users. And generative AI chatbot ChatGPT has exploded in popularity since its release by parent company OpenAI last summer.
However, it is actually programmers all over the world who are actually embracing what ChatGPT has to offer them with open arms — no matter what their level of expertise is.
As a web publisher who uses wordpress, I would not call myself a programmer. But I occasionally have to edit a few lines of PHP, javascript, or node.js, so I’m not totally unfamiliar with code.
Using ChatGPT and Replit, I was able to built a fully functional game that was a combination of the classic games Asteroids and Pac Man. I did not write any code myself, and simply kept asking ChatGPT 4 for code piece after code piece. When I ran into a problem, I asked ChatGPT to fix it. It did!
I was extremely impressed with the potential, at least as a non-programmer.
Debugging Drudgery Dispelled
Many programmers find debugging to be one of the most tedious tasks in a programming job, and it is perhaps here where ChatGPT is most useful.
You can copy your code snippets into ChatGPT, as well as debug logs, and simply say “what is wrong with this? Please fix it.” And often this will work well, allowing you to focus on more productive tasks.
Think of ChatGPT as your assistant, not as an app or program.
10X Your Programming Speed and Skills
While ChatGPT and other generative AI technologies, such as Midjourney, DALL-E, Whisper and Eleven Labs can assist humans in automating some tasks, as well as making certain aspects of programming more efficient, they are highly unlikely to completely replace programmers altogether — at least for the foreseeable future.
This is because programmers possess the skills needed, like critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity, in order to do their jobs properly.
And these human skills present a rather large challenge for the AI, because it can’t replicate them yet.
In addition, AI services like ChatGPT typically require human intervention to ensure accuracy and effectiveness, because ChatGPT, in particular, is known to ‘hallucinate’, which means that it is quite common to receive a generated answer that is not only grammatically incorrect, but simply made up.
A Match Made In (AI) Heaven?
Instead, AI may assist programmers in their work, enabling them to focus on more complex and nuanced aspects of software development. The collaboration between programmers and AI tools will likely lead to even better progress and innovations in the field of technology
The threat of AI taking over large swathes of the job market has so far been the scary bogeyman of mainstream news stories, making many people fear that their livelihoods are at threat.
And yes, ChatGPT can be prompted to write a children’s storybook or family meal plan, but it won’t be able to write a memoir or autobiography. Yes, ChatGPT can be prompted to write computer code, but it’s the programmers who are needed to make sure that the code actually works on all machines in all environments.
AI tools and other apps like ChatGPT are basically allowing programmers to become even more efficient in their work, which means that they’ll be able to save time from having to do mundane tasks. They’ll also be able to solve coding problems faster, which means eventually that they will end up writing better code.
AI tools and other apps like ChatGPT are basically allowing programmers to become even more efficient in their work, which means that they’ll be able to save time from having to do mundane tasks. They’ll also be able to solve coding problems faster, which means eventually that they will end up writing better code.
In fact, the advancement of AI tools like ChatGPT has excited many programmers, because it will allow them to do this. Plus, ChatGPT helps to take away the hassle of learning how to write code in the first place, which means even more people will be able to become programmers, developers, and coding engineers, since it can help them automate those mundane tasks.
ChatGPT, combined with free online courses like Harvard’s EdX CS50 programming course, will create a new generation of AI-friendly programmers.
For now at least, human programmers still have an important role to play, because they still have to piece the code together so that it makes sense. Plus, human programmers have the creativity and emotion needed to build code for other humans, something that AI is not able to experience at all.
Of course, ChatGPT and other generative AI tools are already changing the playing field for the entire tech industry. However, programmers will still be needed to implement and maintain this emerging technology to make it more accessible to the wider public.
See also:
- Combining ChatGPT and Excel/Google Sheets
- Does ChatGPT Learn From Users?
- How to Give ChatGPT a Table for Basic Data Processing and Analysis
Final Thoughts
Although the scary predictions made by Goldman Sachs about artificial intelligence taking over the job market could potentially happen in a transhumanistic future, the transition to the so-called fourth industrial revolution isn’t going to happen overnight.
And while some workers will find that a lot of their work tasks can be done by AI, it’s more likely that the majority will find that only some of their work has been affected by generative AI models like ChatGPT.
So, will ChatGPT replace programmers? Eventually, probably yes, programming will become completely “natural language” with AI producing all the code in the background. But for the moment, staying on top of AI developments will make you a much more productive programmer!
