The whole issue of less jobs for humans and more work for AI and robots is already getting bigger. Because of the capabilities of AI, we're getting to a time where programmers might not be needed as much as we need them right now.
The whole concept of programming is about understanding programming languages and using them to create software programs. Just think about the point of the job, you could easily tell that AI when improved can easily handle this and can do it at a speed that no human programmer can match.
This is putting a lot of fear in the hearts of programmers regarding which languages to keep learning or how well they have to up their own game to stay relevant in the next 5 to 10 years.
According to Gartner, a staggering 80% of the workforce will need to upskill by 2027 which is less than 3 years from now just to to keep up with the growth of generative AI.
Right now, the changes look subtle and slow and there are those that even doubt that this could ever happen, but I tell you this, AI really could fully replace all engineering jobs.
The founder of NVIDIA made a statement about programming and I couldn't forget. He said we have been in an era where parents encourage their little children to study programming and how to code. But that's the whole idea of AI, so that we don't have to do these things ourselves. Now if we don't have to writing lines of code to create a project, computer program or software, then this who do it as a job are cooked.
At this point, AI is more like a helping tool which help developers streamline their tasks, but the real problem programmers will have with the tool is when it starts taking over entire chunks of coding. At that point, software engineers will be dealing with something entirely different which you could refer to as an “AI-native” era.
Our definition of coding will change forever. It'll no longer be about writing lines of code but instructing AI on what you want to create. It's kind of like ai image creation or ai video Creation. Coding will also be an AI prompt engineering job.
So prompt engineering as a skill is what people should be learning right now. How to instruct AI to bring the exact results you're looking for.
But as I keep emphasizing in previous blogs, Human creativity and the human touch is irreplaceable. AI will not take that away and although AI will get better at what it does, it will never be considered alive or human.