Will AI replace the computer programmer?

If movies like The Terminator, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix, Blade Runner, and innumerable others have taught us anything, it’s that artificial intelligence is taking over, and it’s not going to be pretty for those of us who are sentient. Yet, ChatGPT has wholly consumed the collective consciousness and popular culture. Will we never learn?

While I say this in jest, I was curious to know what our developers thought of the increasingly popular application, what value they see in its use in computer programming, and where they believe the future of AI is heading.

Q: Are any of you using AI to support your development work?

A: “I have never used AI to write code and probably never will. It likely scrapes its answers from Stack Overflow (Q&A forum for programmers), which in my experience, provides mixed results.” – Jason

Q: Is there any value currently in using AI in programming?

A: “It appears to do alright at writing very basic functions. For refactoring small functions or creating fake data, it’s ok. It cannot do human thinking or support you in talking yourself through a problem, so its usefulness is very limited at this point.” – Joey

Q: So we shouldn’t trust AI’s ability to replace humans in programming?

A: “Ultimately, at the end of the day, current AI is not self-learning or self-creating. So if a real issue arises, a human still needs to solve the problem. Right now, AI is just pulling information that exists on the internet, but there is no human oversight to determine whether it is right or wrong.” – Tiffany

“Agreed. AI is just taking things that have already been created, mashing them together, and giving you an answer. Nothing at the moment is original.” – Anthony

“I’m more concerned about AI replacing humans in other fields first. There really isn’t a margin for error in programming; therefore, you can’t replace human oversight right now.” – Jason

We won’t argue the merits of artificial intelligence in other use cases, and clearly, there are many, evidenced by ChatGPT’s reported 100 million monthly users. What we do know, in its current form, AI is not powerful enough to replace human oversight. While AI’s future remains debatable, it cannot be counted on as a substitute for a strong development team.