By Patrick Yates
After going viral on social media in late 2022, ChatGPT and other Large Language Models (LLMs) have been a huge topic of conversation. People are understandably fascinated by what it these new AI systems can do.
As a software engineer, one of the most incredible things it can do for me is write code from a simple prompt. But, because of this, many people in the software world are worried about whether their job is safe from AI.
As the AI and ML (Machine Learning) world grows, the models become more sophisticated and also have more data to learn from. This leads to them being able to do things like writing a long document on any topic you can think of, with a high degree of accuracy.
The newest version of ChatGPT (GPT-4) has plugins for many different things that can automate large parts of programming and other tasks, and even some that can create no-code applications from just a few prompts or a business case. This does leave you wondering – if the computer can write code and create applications, why do we need software engineers?
Even though things like ChatGPT have developed and become mainstream technologies very quickly, they are not at the point where they can completely take over writing software. ChatGPT can write code quickly from simple plain English instructions – but if the prompt becomes too large, or the code needed to achieve the desired outcome becomes too complicated, bugs and errors will start to show. People are then needed to debug and fix the code.
Developers are creative and, in the modern world, how an application looks and feels is just as important, if not more important, than its functionality. Computers cannot yet be creative in the same way as a software engineer or web designer.
There are hundreds of different types of software – websites, mobile apps, desktop apps – and there is software in almost everything that needs to be written by someone. People rely on software to help run their lives: in today’s society even making a bank transfer involves hundreds of thousands of lines of code. The modern development process is designed so that the code is as secure and safe as possible (important for things like bank transfers or making a purchase on a website). If we just let a computer program write computer programs it could come up with anything, or even develop bad habits which could create security holes in important software.
Although AI models like GPT have problems when it comes to writing programs without developers, they do have a use when it comes to programming. In 2021 another AI model was released called GitHub Copilot. This is an AI powered code completion software that can generate code to help a developer – as a tool rather than a replacement. Many developers use GitHub and it increases productivity for small repetitive tasks.
So, in summary, I don’t think AI will be able to take over my job, or any job – in my lifetime at least. Currently the models are just not advanced enough to be able to write code, or to do anything, to the high levels that trained and skilled people can. That level of AI is still science fiction and most likely will be for a very long time to come.
