There had been concerns that AI could end up affecting programming jobs, but some voices in the field believe that AI is already better than many programmers.
Former Stability AI founder Emad Mostaque has said that AI is already better than outsourced Indian programmers, and could soon begin to impact their jobs. “AI is better than any Indian programmer, pretty much, that’s outsourced right now,” he said in an interview. “And so you will have impact on those economies,” he added.
Mostaque said that AI will severely impact the Business Process Outsourcing space.”(AI will cause a) complete destruction of the BPO market, which will reverberate out. When you use (OpenAI) operator now, those technologies that take over your computer — it’s a bit rubbish now, but it’s the worst it’ll ever be. Anything on the other side of a screen, I think this year is the year gets displaced,” he said.
“Being in-person (in office) is going to be good for your job right now. Because if you’re remote, you’ll be the first to go. That’s a really important point,” he added.
This isn’t the first time that Emad Mostaque has rung alarm bells over how Indian programmers will be impacted by AI. In July 2023, he had said that most coding jobs outsourced to India will be replaced in two years. He’d also said that all programming jobs would be replaced by AI in the next five years.
Mostaque’s statement about AI being better than most Indian outsourced programmers might sound dire, but it could well be true. AI has gotten extremely good at programming in the last couple of years. AI coding tools like Cursor and Lovable are helping even non-coders write working code in a fraction of the time that it normally would take many professional coders. Even the best professional coders now extensively use AI in their work, increasing their efficiency, which could lead to a reduction in available coding jobs.
And if India’s coding jobs are impacted by AI, it could upend its multi-billion dollar software industry, which provides employment to hundreds of thousands of workers. Some of India’s most valuable comapnies including TCS, Infosys and Wipro are also in the IT outsourcing space , and they could see their business be hit if their services were to be replaced with AI. For their part, these companies are looking to build AI capabilities themselves — TCS has said it’s looking to build a ChatGPT-like system that writes code, and Infosys has said it’s sharpening its focus on generative AI.
Emad Mostaque, though, is a bit of a controversial figure himself. Stable Diffusion is the world’s most popular open-source AI image software at the moment, but he’s battled accusations that his company unfairly took credit for the work done by a German research lab. A Forbes expose had also said that Mostaque had also exaggerated his linkages with global agencies like WHO to raise funds for Stability AI, and that his wife had dipped into the company’s funds for personal use. It remains to be seen if his prediction comes true, but even if 50% of India’s coding jobs are lost to AI this year, it could result in significant upheavals in India’s economy — and its society as a whole.