More and more tech leaders are saying that the era of humans painstakingly writing code is heading to a close.
Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott has said that within the next five years, a 95% of code will be generated by artificial intelligence. Scott however says that while AI might write the bulk of the code, the essence of software engineering – the design, architecture, and overall creative direction – will remain firmly in human hands.
“95% (code) is going to be AI generated,” Scott said. “Very little is going to be line by line, is going to be human-written code.”
This doesn’t, however, imply a complete takeover of the software engineering role by AI. Scott emphasized this distinction, adding: “Now that doesn’t mean that the AI is doing the software engineering job.”
He believes the core human element in software creation won’t be diminished: “So, I think the more important and interesting part of authorship is still going to be entirely human.”
Scott’s assertion carries significant weight, coming from the CTO of a tech giant deeply invested in AI. Microsoft’s integration of AI into its products, including Copilot, demonstrates the company’s belief in AI’s transformative potential in coding. This prediction underscores the ongoing shift in the software development landscape, where AI tools are evolving from mere assistants to potentially primary code producers.
Scott isn’t the only tech leader who believes that most coding will be automated in the coming years. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has an even more aggressive timeline, saying that 90 percent of code will be written by AI in the next 3-6 months, while a 100 percent of code could be written by AI within a year. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that by the end of 2025, AI will be as good as a mid-level engineer. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said that the world’s best AI will be a programmer by the end of the year.
And apart from these predictions, there are real-world shifts happening as well. Klarna has said it’s stopped hiring humans because of the gains it’s seeing from AI, and Salesforce has said it’ll not hire any more engineers this year. Inmobi, meanwhile, has saidthat 80 percent of code at the company will soon be automated, and engineers will end up losing jobs. And with Microsoft too saying that most code will end up being written by AI, it’s becoming increasingly likely that software development roles could end up looking very different in the not too distant future.