
AI will replace coders by 2040, warn academics - sizzle
https://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/3022589/ai-could-replace-coders-by-2040-say-academics
======
TheBiv
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
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.

~~~
viraptor
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...](https://mathoverflow.net/questions/7330/which-math-paper-maximizes-
the-ratio-importance-length)

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/)
;-)

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Well then, surely academics will have been replaced by 2030, right?

~~~
sgt101
"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)

------
zwieback
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
> Machines writing code under human direction

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

------
froderick
> 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.

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

~~~
Viper007Bond
Sadly we'll be replaced 2 years too late. :(

------
zeveb
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
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.

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

------
Zenst
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.

------
kenforthewin
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.

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

~~~
orf
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.

------
jug
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.

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

~~~
xab9
One word: skynet.

------
purplezooey
Doubt it. Where are my flying cars, BTW.

------
jksmith
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.

------
sizzle
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?

------
jhiska
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.

------
JustSomeNobody
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.

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

------
j_coder
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.

------
CoryG89
I guess the gen1 AIs will be coding the gen2 AIs then?

------
ythn
I'll believe it when I see it

------
wickedlogic
Warn? Isn't this expected....

------
bruncun
Couldn't happen sooner! ;)

------
freqn
Hogwash.

------
colinmegill
lol

------
mankash666
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
I agree, that's why I submitted it as it has some credibility behind the name.
@dang

