How worried should software developers be about Devin AI? (Part 2/2)

On the subject of Artificial Intelligence taking over software development, there's both good news and bad news. Actually, most of it is bad. But let's start with the good.

Your edge against Artificial Intelligence

Computer processors have grown faster over time. That's a bit of an understatement; processing speed and power have increased at an astonishing rate over the past few decades. Faxes used to take twenty minutes to travel the world; now email performs the same function in seconds, or less.

But however fast computers are now, they're still at best capable of accessing and processing information millions of times faster than humans. Their ability to create new things is an illusion - creating what appears to be new things using existing content as input. The creativity factor is probably a zero. And mathematically, zero multiplied by millions, is still zero. Thus, no matter how fast computers get, they aren't any closer to true creativity than they were decades ago.

Machines are always
significantly faster.

Human beings on the other hand... while it's difficult to objectively measure creativity, I think it's safe to say that the creativity factor of the most brilliant minds on the planet, is probably above zero. Therefore, no matter how slow human beings are compared to computers, we still have that edge.

I've also mentioned before that machines aren't capable of loving their work. They aren't capable of being motivated by things like pride and passion. All that requires flesh and blood. So, for whatever it's worth, that is one thing that no A.I can ever replicate. For the simple reason that whatever A.I is capable of, is what humans have been able to define, just performed at significantly higher speeds. No human has ever been able to successfully formulate love, passion and pride. Subsequently, no A.I is capable of those things.

Artificial Intelligence's edge against you

One may think that A.I's lack of pride works against them. But this also means A.I, doesn't have an ego. A.I is not programmed to give up out of frustration, or refuse to learn because their non-existent pride forbids it. A.I is relentless, and keeps going. And because A.I is programmed to learn, at some point it will write better code than any human.

If, as a software developer, you have predicated your entire career around your ability to write clean, beautiful, well-documented and nicely structured code, you have spectacularly missed the point. A software developer's job is not coding. Your job is to solve problems and provide business value. Sometimes, that involves writing code. If there are people who can write code as well or better than you, since Devin AI can trawl the internet and get their code; subsequently Devin AI can code better than you, faster than you, and with a lot less effort.

Whose code is better?
Who cares?

Is it true that A.I can code better than the average software developer? That's the wrong question to ask. The correct question is, how badly do employers want it to be true?

We can argue until the cows come home, about the qualities human software developers bring - passion, pride, possibly better code. But none of it matters. When your bosses ask you about the progress of a project, do they ask how clean or beautiful the code is? No, they ask how soon it will be ready for production. The sad fact of the matter is, code quality is an engineering concern, and business people primarily care about profits. So even if human beings were truly able to write better code, business owners would probably still be more forgiving of whatever flaws A.I produced, as long as it didn't affect the bottom line.

One could argue that bad code does affect the bottom line. But again, how much would it matter to the customer base?

You could say you would support human-created art over computer-generated art. But when it comes right down to it, would you be able to tell the difference? Similarly, would the average consumer be able to tell if it was a human who wrote the code, or A.I? Would the average consumer even care as long as shit worked to an acceptable degree?

Twenty years ago, I was a web developer. I made database-driven websites for a living. Then came website builders that automated everything I was doing, and put the power of website creation squarely in the hands of non-technical people. Thankfully, I had already moved on to bigger things before this happened. Would these website builders truly be able to outdo the creativity of the human mind? Maybe not. Would it matter if they didn't? Would the average web surfer be able to tell the difference, or even care? How creative or cutting-edge do we truly need websites to be?

Think about all the writers whose work A.I is generating new content based on. Or filmmakers who may be going out of a job once A.I can replicate their work and create seemingly-new work imitating their style. Unless users have consumed enough media, books and films to distinguish A.I generated content from the "real" thing, there is going to be a market. And the machines can churn out more of this stuff quicker than humans ever can. Imagine the profits. By that point, would those profiting care about authenticity? Would consumers care enough to make a difference?

Therefore, it's no longer even about who can do the better job. It's about who can do an acceptable job, for much cheaper.

In summary

To answer the question in the title, how afraid should software developers be?

I don't want to underestimate the power of A.I. At the same time, though, let's not get carried away. Either way, I'm at the sunset of my career and I have just about no skin in the game. If A.I takes over, great. If it doesn't, also great. Either way, I doubt I'll be losing much sleep over it.

This is your world now, kids. Enjoy.

Keep calm and code on,
T___T