5 ms·

AI will replace coders by 2040, warn academics

35 points by sizzle 9y ago

dpedu 9y ago
Good, we won't have to fix the time rollover bug ourselves after all.
- Viper007Bond 9y ago
  Sadly we'll be replaced 2 years too late. :(
ekblom 9y ago
Yeah, lets hope they make it self improving too, then nobody needs to work anymore.
- xab9 9y ago
  One word: skynet.
wickedlogic 9y ago
Warn? Isn't this expected....
nevir 9y ago
Good! We should be working to automate ourselves away, along with everything else. It's what we do.
TheBiv 9y ago
The study cited is a 3 page PDF that has absolutely zero scientific weight. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.00676.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.00676.pdf
- igorgue 9y ago
  I cannot believe is only 3 pages do you really need 3 authors to do that? At least this kind of academia wont be replaced because their work is worthless, thus we have no interest into automating it.
  - revelation 9y ago
    Some of the best papers of past were only 2 or 3 pages. Certainly not this one though, that's not even a paper, that's just an extended online comment, letter to the editor, journal preface.
  - viraptor 9y ago
    It doesn't matter how many pages are there in a paper. It's the content that matters. Math papers have the best chance of standing out here due to good abstractions: https://mathoverflow.net/questions/7330/which-math-paper-maximizes-the-ratio-importance-length https://mathoverflow.net/questions/7330/which-math-paper-max... If you discovered something amazing that takes one page to describe, why write a book about it? Even if it took 80 people in the team. PS. exactly this kind of work (crappy paper) has been automated: http://thatsmathematics.com/mathgen/ http://thatsmathematics.com/mathgen/ ;-)
- tananaev 9y ago
  I don't think there can be any actual science behind predictions like this. Someone just wants more funding for AI research, I guess.
swagtricker 9y ago
Well then, surely academics will have been replaced by 2030, right?
- sgt101 9y ago
  "It's ok if it's true as I figure Professor of AI will be the last job title standing" (Patrick Henry Winston, MIT AI & The Future of Work Conference 2nd Nov 2017)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ythn 9y ago
I'll believe it when I see it
jug 9y ago
Jokes on them, I'm about to hit my 40's. Seriously though, if this happens, the repercussions might be far greater than coders having been replaced by (I'd assume self-improving) AI.
zeveb 9y ago
Hasn't it done so already? To a first approximation, none of us spends significant time coding in machine language; rather, we write in higher-level languages which heuristics-based artificial intelligences then compile down to machine language. Why, some of us use yet more-advanced AIs which can even perform certain safety checks for us, to ensure e.g. that we aren't using kilometres per hour when we ought to be using inches per second. I'm not just being coy: as long as there are computers generating code, there will be a need for people to tell those computers what to generate. Those people will be coders, whatever they are called at the time.
- nine_k 9y ago
  Indeed. "Software developer" > "coder", and the difference will only become more stark as machines become more advanced, giving the developers more powerful tools. The key ability of a good developer is finding out and understanding what needs to be done, the translation form the language of business to the language of technology. Technology has moved from low-level register juggling of 1950s to modern high-level, more and more declarative languages and frameworks. But the need to be able to map the informal requirements of business to it did not go away, and likely will not for quite some time.
colinmegill 9y ago
lol
purplezooey 9y ago
Doubt it. Where are my flying cars, BTW.
iamcasen 9y ago
At that point then, I imagine absolutely everything will have already been automated. Lawyers would certainly no longer be needed, nor would much of the judicial system. Music would be automated, hell maybe even animated movies. We might have celebrity neural nets that produce the best music/paintings/memes. I definitely agree that coding will look different after AI has permeated most of our information systems, but fully automated coding by 2040? Really? I honestly only see mundane boilerplate type of coding tasks being automated -- though arguably that is probably what a large majority of software developers are currently doing.
- TaylorAlexander 9y ago
  I talk to people today who think that mechanical design is basically trivial because we have CAD. All these tools do is help us do much more than we could before. But at some point humans get to decide what we want to use our tools for. We’ll just have much more technological power in the future.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    We obsoleted hand drafting decades ago. Yet it takes ever bigger and more expensive teams to make airplanes.
    - orf 9y ago
      Surely this is because the systems are more complex that you would have no hope designing using pens and pencils, even with the largest team in the world. As the capacity increases so does the complexity.
  - sizzle 9y ago
    Have you seen this? https://autodeskresearch.com/projects/dreamcatcher https://autodeskresearch.com/projects/dreamcatcher
    - TaylorAlexander 9y ago
Zenst 9y ago
Before that happens the area's of code review and auditing would be most likely to happen as without that, we will just have AI that can produce buggy code much faster than before. After all, if AI could code like a human, even the best of us make mistakes and without that avenue of teaching them to be better, by auditing and reviewing existing code, we will only create more problems than we solve. For many others, intelligent compiler reports would be their first wish.
freqn 9y ago
Hogwash.
kenforthewin 9y ago
The paper's abstract contradicts the article title. The paper argues that AI will "allow humans to cope with the difficulty of programming different devices efficiently and easily." This is much more believable than the assertion that coders will be replaced.
dboreham 9y ago
Time to rediscover Perlis' doctrine and stock up on lollipops ?
JustSomeNobody 9y ago
Nothing like a good headline! As to the subject, no, AI won't replace coders by 2040. I'll meet y'all back here then to say I told you so.
CoryG89 9y ago
I guess the gen1 AIs will be coding the gen2 AIs then?
froderick 9y ago
> The academics are certain that there will therefore be a shift from human coders to AI-driven coders by 2040. On the ML front, little appears to be fundamentally new in the last two decades. Not sure how the ML classification craze is going to metastasize into full AI in the next two without some major new developments. ‘Academic certainty’ isn’t going to do it.
zwieback 9y ago
The final paragraph gives a clue about how serious the authors themselves seem to take their claims: Machines writing code under human direction will only further improve our ability to explore the universe, enjoy life, and stream Netflix, especially if it saves us the trouble of learning how to make extremely heterogeneous systems work together. You go ahead and stream Netflix, I think I'll write some more code.
- Chaebixi 9y ago
  > Machines writing code under human direction Plus, that human direction is essentially what programmers do now.
bruncun 9y ago
Couldn't happen sooner! ;)
jhiska 9y ago
Lone paper on arxiv without any arguments but just "predictions" from "current trends". Get real. This is just futurology. Knowingly deceptive article trying to set what people talk about.
jksmith 9y ago
Programming "entities" argue about golang not having generics. Initiate global thermonuclear war thanks to security bug found in Rust library. AI finds .net of no interest. World saved by humans who fired up an ancient version of Delphi and wrote a worm.
mankash666 9y ago
Why is this flagged? Oakridge is a reputable national lab - just because their research is unpalatable, doesn't make it irrelevant. HN - denial is NOT the answer
- sizzle 9y ago
  I agree, that's why I submitted it as it has some credibility behind the name. @dang
sizzle 9y ago
Have you guys seen this generative CAD project: https://autodeskresearch.com/projects/dreamcatcher https://autodeskresearch.com/projects/dreamcatcher What would the software programming equivalent look like?
j_coder 9y ago
Coders need to strike now and kill the AI threat. We should not wait for 2040!!! - No deep learning, - No Alpha Go Zero, - No autonomous cars, - No whiteboard tests, - No open office, - No rental increases.

35 points by sizzle 9y ago

dpedu 9y ago

Good, we won't have to fix the time rollover bug ourselves after all.

Viper007Bond 9y ago
Sadly we'll be replaced 2 years too late. :(

ekblom 9y ago

Yeah, lets hope they make it self improving too, then nobody needs to work anymore.

xab9 9y ago
One word: skynet.

wickedlogic 9y ago

Warn? Isn't this expected....

nevir 9y ago

Good! We should be working to automate ourselves away, along with everything else. It's what we do.

TheBiv 9y ago

The study cited is a 3 page PDF that has absolutely zero scientific weight. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.00676.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.00676.pdf

igorgue 9y ago
I cannot believe is only 3 pages do you really need 3 authors to do that? At least this kind of academia wont be replaced because their work is worthless, thus we have no interest into automating it.
- revelation 9y ago
  Some of the best papers of past were only 2 or 3 pages. Certainly not this one though, that's not even a paper, that's just an extended online comment, letter to the editor, journal preface.
- viraptor 9y ago
  It doesn't matter how many pages are there in a paper. It's the content that matters. Math papers have the best chance of standing out here due to good abstractions: https://mathoverflow.net/questions/7330/which-math-paper-maximizes-the-ratio-importance-length https://mathoverflow.net/questions/7330/which-math-paper-max... If you discovered something amazing that takes one page to describe, why write a book about it? Even if it took 80 people in the team. PS. exactly this kind of work (crappy paper) has been automated: http://thatsmathematics.com/mathgen/ http://thatsmathematics.com/mathgen/ ;-)
tananaev 9y ago
I don't think there can be any actual science behind predictions like this. Someone just wants more funding for AI research, I guess.

swagtricker 9y ago

Well then, surely academics will have been replaced by 2030, right?

sgt101 9y ago
"It's ok if it's true as I figure Professor of AI will be the last job title standing" (Patrick Henry Winston, MIT AI & The Future of Work Conference 2nd Nov 2017)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

ythn 9y ago

I'll believe it when I see it

jug 9y ago

Jokes on them, I'm about to hit my 40's. Seriously though, if this happens, the repercussions might be far greater than coders having been replaced by (I'd assume self-improving) AI.

zeveb 9y ago

Hasn't it done so already? To a first approximation, none of us spends significant time coding in machine language; rather, we write in higher-level languages which heuristics-based artificial intelligences then compile down to machine language. Why, some of us use yet more-advanced AIs which can even perform certain safety checks for us, to ensure e.g. that we aren't using kilometres per hour when we ought to be using inches per second. I'm not just being coy: as long as there are computers generating code, there will be a need for people to tell those computers what to generate. Those people will be coders, whatever they are called at the time.

nine_k 9y ago
Indeed. "Software developer" > "coder", and the difference will only become more stark as machines become more advanced, giving the developers more powerful tools. The key ability of a good developer is finding out and understanding what needs to be done, the translation form the language of business to the language of technology. Technology has moved from low-level register juggling of 1950s to modern high-level, more and more declarative languages and frameworks. But the need to be able to map the informal requirements of business to it did not go away, and likely will not for quite some time.

colinmegill 9y ago

lol

purplezooey 9y ago

Doubt it. Where are my flying cars, BTW.

iamcasen 9y ago

At that point then, I imagine absolutely everything will have already been automated. Lawyers would certainly no longer be needed, nor would much of the judicial system. Music would be automated, hell maybe even animated movies. We might have celebrity neural nets that produce the best music/paintings/memes. I definitely agree that coding will look different after AI has permeated most of our information systems, but fully automated coding by 2040? Really? I honestly only see mundane boilerplate type of coding tasks being automated -- though arguably that is probably what a large majority of software developers are currently doing.

TaylorAlexander 9y ago
I talk to people today who think that mechanical design is basically trivial because we have CAD. All these tools do is help us do much more than we could before. But at some point humans get to decide what we want to use our tools for. We’ll just have much more technological power in the future.
- rayiner 9y ago
  We obsoleted hand drafting decades ago. Yet it takes ever bigger and more expensive teams to make airplanes.
  - orf 9y ago
    Surely this is because the systems are more complex that you would have no hope designing using pens and pencils, even with the largest team in the world. As the capacity increases so does the complexity.
- sizzle 9y ago
  Have you seen this? https://autodeskresearch.com/projects/dreamcatcher https://autodeskresearch.com/projects/dreamcatcher
  - TaylorAlexander 9y ago

Zenst 9y ago

Before that happens the area's of code review and auditing would be most likely to happen as without that, we will just have AI that can produce buggy code much faster than before. After all, if AI could code like a human, even the best of us make mistakes and without that avenue of teaching them to be better, by auditing and reviewing existing code, we will only create more problems than we solve. For many others, intelligent compiler reports would be their first wish.

freqn 9y ago

Hogwash.

kenforthewin 9y ago

The paper's abstract contradicts the article title. The paper argues that AI will "allow humans to cope with the difficulty of programming different devices efficiently and easily." This is much more believable than the assertion that coders will be replaced.

dboreham 9y ago

Time to rediscover Perlis' doctrine and stock up on lollipops ?

JustSomeNobody 9y ago

Nothing like a good headline! As to the subject, no, AI won't replace coders by 2040. I'll meet y'all back here then to say I told you so.

CoryG89 9y ago

I guess the gen1 AIs will be coding the gen2 AIs then?

froderick 9y ago

> The academics are certain that there will therefore be a shift from human coders to AI-driven coders by 2040. On the ML front, little appears to be fundamentally new in the last two decades. Not sure how the ML classification craze is going to metastasize into full AI in the next two without some major new developments. ‘Academic certainty’ isn’t going to do it.

zwieback 9y ago

The final paragraph gives a clue about how serious the authors themselves seem to take their claims: Machines writing code under human direction will only further improve our ability to explore the universe, enjoy life, and stream Netflix, especially if it saves us the trouble of learning how to make extremely heterogeneous systems work together. You go ahead and stream Netflix, I think I'll write some more code.

Chaebixi 9y ago
> Machines writing code under human direction Plus, that human direction is essentially what programmers do now.

bruncun 9y ago

Couldn't happen sooner! ;)

jhiska 9y ago

Lone paper on arxiv without any arguments but just "predictions" from "current trends". Get real. This is just futurology. Knowingly deceptive article trying to set what people talk about.

jksmith 9y ago

Programming "entities" argue about golang not having generics. Initiate global thermonuclear war thanks to security bug found in Rust library. AI finds .net of no interest. World saved by humans who fired up an ancient version of Delphi and wrote a worm.

mankash666 9y ago

Why is this flagged? Oakridge is a reputable national lab - just because their research is unpalatable, doesn't make it irrelevant. HN - denial is NOT the answer

sizzle 9y ago
I agree, that's why I submitted it as it has some credibility behind the name. @dang

sizzle 9y ago

Have you guys seen this generative CAD project: https://autodeskresearch.com/projects/dreamcatcher https://autodeskresearch.com/projects/dreamcatcher What would the software programming equivalent look like?

j_coder 9y ago

Coders need to strike now and kill the AI threat. We should not wait for 2040!!! - No deep learning, - No Alpha Go Zero, - No autonomous cars, - No whiteboard tests, - No open office, - No rental increases.