AI will replace coders by 2040, warn academics

https://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/3022589/ai-could-replace-coders-by-2040-say-academics

by sizzle • 9 years ago

35 41 9 years ago

v3.co.uk

wickedlogic• 9 years ago

Warn? Isn't this expected....

nevir• 9 years ago

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

TheBiv• 9 years ago

The study cited is a 3 page PDF that has absolutely zero scientific weight.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.00676.pdf

igorgue• 9 years 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• 9 years 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• 9 years 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-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/ ;-)

tananaev• 9 years 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• 9 years ago

Well then, surely academics will have been replaced by 2030, right?

sgt101• 9 years 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)

ythn• 9 years ago

I'll believe it when I see it

dpedu• 9 years ago

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

Viper007Bond• 9 years ago

Sadly we'll be replaced 2 years too late. :(

ekblom• 9 years ago

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

xab9• 9 years ago

One word: skynet.

jug• 9 years 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Seriously though, if this happens, the repercussions might be far greater than coders having been replaced by (I'd assume self-improving) AI.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• 9 years 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• 9 years 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• 9 years ago

lol

purplezooey• 9 years ago

Doubt it. Where are my flying cars, BTW.

iamcasen• 9 years 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.

TaylorAlexander2• 9 years 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• 9 years ago

We obsoleted hand drafting decades ago. Yet it takes ever bigger and more expensive teams to make airplanes.

sizzle3• 9 years ago

Have you seen this? https://autodeskresearch.com/projects/dreamcatcher

Zenst• 9 years 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• 9 years ago

Hogwash.

kenforthewin• 9 years 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• 9 years ago

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

JustSomeNobody• 9 years 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• 9 years ago

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

froderick• 9 years 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• 9 years 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• 9 years ago

Machines writing code under human direction

Plus, that human direction is essentially what programmers do now.

bruncun• 9 years ago

Couldn't happen sooner! ;)

jhiska• 9 years 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• 9 years 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• 9 years 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

sizzle3• 9 years ago

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

sizzle3• 9 years ago

Have you guys seen this generative CAD project: https://autodeskresearch.com/projects/dreamcatcher

What would the software programming equivalent look like?

j_coder• 9 years 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.

AI will replace coders by 2040, warn academics

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