Why AI is a Tool, Not a Threat, to Software Engineers

It’s pretty obvious that AI is being heavily applied in most of our day-to-day tasks, whether they are work-related, family, or personal. From writing and designing to music, video editing, and more, you’ve likely used AI at some point. If not, you're missing out on a lot.

With this high usage of AI, there’s a belief that many people are losing their jobs. This is true in some cases, particularly in the tech industry, where many claim that AI is replacing jobs. However, this perspective misses some crucial points.

Almost every day, I see videos on social media urging people not to learn coding or pursue a college degree in computer science, simply because AI is becoming more powerful. While it’s true that you don’t necessarily need a college degree to excel in coding, it's still beneficial if you understand its value and can afford it. But that's not the focus here—let’s get back to the topic.

In my half-decade in the tech field, even before the boom of ChatGPT, Bard, Gemini, and Claude AI, GitHub introduced us to Copilot, a year before ChatGPT was launched. I was one of the early adopters, and I can tell you, it made my work much easier, and I enjoyed using it most of the time. However, there were moments when its code suggestions were so off that I had to disable the extension in my IDE. Then, a year and a couple of months later, ChatGPT was released. Trust me, while Copilot did its job, using ChatGPT was even easier and felt much better. Suddenly, everyone was using ChatGPT; it was everywhere, in the news, and on everyone’s lips. I even found myself chatting with the bot for fun, as if it were a real human—ridiculous, I know.

In 2023, many tech companies, including Google, Amazon's livestreaming platform Twitch, Microsoft, and Meta, had mass layoffs. Most of them claimed it was due to their shift in focus to AI. In his memo, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, informed his employees about the changes he was aiming to make because he saw opportunities in AI. You can read the full memo on CNBC.

The point is, people lost their jobs, but that doesn’t mean the entire industry was devastated. For instance, Google laid off 12,000 people out of 182,502—about 6.6% lost their jobs, meaning over 93% kept theirs. The same applies to Meta, Microsoft, and others.

Some might say that AI is still learning and will become much better in the near future. While that may be true, we must understand something: just like calculators, computers, and other significant innovations, AI isn’t here to destroy but to make the world easier. In my opinion, AI is not yet capable of replacing software engineers anytime soon, but it certainly makes the journey easier. By the way, I’ve noticed that many who claim that AI will replace developers often lack deep technical expertise. If they had experience using AI in coding, they’d understand how frequently these tools fall short. Perhaps their claims are driven by the desire to attract investment for new AI startups, but the reality is far more nuanced—it’s about more than just writing code.

If I were to write everything I have in mind, I could end up writing a book, so I'll stop here.