Even as more and more code at top corporations is being written by AI, and AI is on the cusp of beating the best human programmers, the role of human software engineers might not entirely go away.
Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan has offered a nuanced perspective on the evolving relationship between humans and AI, particularly in the realm of coding. Tan offers a compelling analogy to the impact of photography on painting to explain how he sees AI shaping the future of software development. His point isn’t that coding will disappear, but that its nature will evolve, with the crucial element being the “artistry” in the human-technology interface.
“We are in this moment…if we take the analogy of the camera, the camera made it so that you don’t have to paint anymore,” Tan said. “The subtlety there is that aesthetics in the world still exists,” he added.
Applying this to software development, Tan argues, “I think the artistry of creating software or technology products is actually in that interface between the human and the technology itself.”
Therefore, he suggests, “If you’re doing backend software and you’re writing APIs and models that might get a lot of help from these types of AI programmers,” coding becomes more about clearly defining the desired outcome. “You can strongly type this stuff and then you can actually use language to translate that into saying what the product should actually do.”
However, the core of the creative process remains: “But there is still an artistry in that interface of what [the product] should actually even *do* and *how*.”
Tan’s analogy suggests that while AI might automate the more mechanical aspects of coding, much like the camera automated the precise replication of visual reality, it won’t replace the crucial human element. Just as photography freed painters to explore abstract expressionism and other forms of artistic expression through pictures, AI could liberate programmers from rote tasks and empower them to focus on higher-level design, user experience, and the nuanced interplay between humans and technology. This reinforces the idea that even with AI assistance, the essential artistic vision of what a product should be — and how it should interact with its users — remains firmly in the human domain. The focus shifts from writing lines of code to crafting experiences. In this new era, the most valuable software engineers will likely be those who can effectively leverage AI tools while retaining a strong grasp of human needs and desires, shaping technology to serve those needs in innovative and engaging ways.