AI not replacing SW engineers anytime soon

Today I wrote a short rant on LinkedIn about why AI won’t replace software engineers anytime soon. LinkedIn’s format favors brevity, which is why I started this blog – that, and I didn’t want to force readers into a Medium subscription.

Anyway, back to the topic. You might recall Bloomberg’s somewhat viral post about a magical AI called Devin. This AI could supposedly pick up tasks from sites like Fiverr and complete them autonomously. Instead of just code suggestions and autocompletion, Devin was advertised as taking on entire software projects based on vague requirements.

While these claims pop up frequently, I haven’t seen anything remotely capable of handling complete projects from unclear specifications. I firmly believe in AI’s power, especially as a software engineering assistant, but I don’t see full project automation happening right now. I’m sure this will change in the coming years. And yes, I’ve experimented extensively with autoGPT and similar tools. I even own the domain agentthinking.ai and have developed my own framework for incorporating AI – I might share it later.

But again, back to the main point. It was refreshing to see someone debunk the Devin-AI claim in detail. The video is a bit lengthy at 25 minutes, but I highly recommend it. Description on the youtube page: “Recently, Devin the supposed “First AI Software Engineer” was announced. The company lied and said that their video showed Devin completing and getting paid for freelance jobs on Upwork, but it didn’t show that at all. I broke down the Devin Upwork video frame by frame, and here I show what Devin was supposed to do, what it actually managed to do instead, and how bad a job of that it did.”

The danger with claims about AI replacing engineers or saving massive amounts of development time is that they reach C-level executives and trigger their “organizational optimization” instincts. This is especially prevalent in companies where tech is seen as a cost center rather than a value creator.

Instead of the usual “let’s revolutionize with AI” hype, let’s focus on the fantastic opportunities of AI-assisted development.