Will computers replace engineers in the near future? Is this even a possibility?

With today’s rapid advancement in digital technology, there happens to be a debate regarding the relevance of software engineers in the near future. Artificial intelligence has been influencing our lives for decades, even up till this moment, the effects of AI is still felt in our lives.

Today, it is quite evident that Artificial intelligence systems are outperforming in more ways than one. As we know, software engineering is the application of the principles applied in the field of engineering, which typically deals with physical systems, to the design, development, testing, deployment and management of the software. In essence, the primary task of a software engineer is to modify and develop sophisticated software. Most times, they also have to spend time in making improvements with the sole purpose of increasing the usability of the software.

So, Will Artificial Intelligence Take The Place Of Software Engineers In The Future?

Well, this question is a bit challenging to answer. However, according to some users on Quora, Artificial intelligence will not be able to replace the ability of software engineers in the future. To get a better understanding of the situation, we’re going to feature some of their answers. The fact remains that how the future of Artificial Intelligence will pan out humans remains to be seen.

According to Doug McCreary, “AI will not write better code for the foreseeable future because we don’t understand what we are doing well enough yet to train a computer. Get ten engineers together, present them with a medium(ish) software system of maybe 100 million lines of code, and get them all to agree that it is perfect.”

As soon as you can do that, it will be time to begin training an AI to generate code like that.

(The tongue in cheek point is that ten engineers will all take different tacks on what is important in code, and will all find fault with each other’s ideas. There’s no good traction yet on what makes code ‘good,’ and until there is we won’t be able to teach an AI, at least not any of the kinds of AI we know about right now).”

Roman Trusov added, “Twenty-five years ago, in 1991, would you be able to predict a dot-com bubble and its consequences for software engineers, IT companies, and job opportunities? It was seven years before Google and thirteen years before Facebook. Ten years before the release of the first iPod. How reliable would be your predictions?”

Ten years ago, in 2006, before the iPhone, would you be able to predict the boom of apps and the crazy amount of jobs it created?

Five years ago, in 2011, before the deep learning obsession, would you be able to predict the success of computer vision and investments in the range of 10M in AI startups? What about WhatsApp 21B acquisition?

If you could accurately predict at least a tiny fraction of those things that happened when nobody expected them to, you’d likely be a billionaire. And it wouldn’t instantly make you some kind of oracle because such lucky guesses happen only a few times in a lifetime. The only way to know the future is to create it yourself, so don’t rely on the “predictions” you read all over the internet. Instead of reading such speculations, read some C++ and algorithms books, it will have a much more profound impact on your career.

The second part of the question…

AI doesn’t write code yet. But then again, in five years, it might. Or it might not. I don’t see why does it matter if you are capable of solving engineering problems anyway.”

According to Tibor Bamhor, We are not close to “AI writing code.”

However, there are fields of coding where AI will be (and already is) very useful, where it can save some time of coders, or even allow to address some problems that are impossible (or at least very complicated) for humans.

So briefly – I don’t believe AI will write programs from scratch in close time but will be very useful in some fields.

Look at AI driving cars, or playing GO game – AI is the core of this applications, but humans still have to spend a lot of time and effort to “wrap” it into something functional, or program the environment for AI to be trained.”

All in all, according to these Quora users, artificial intelligence will not be able to replace software engineers in the near future. Let’s face it, the ability of humans cannot be easily surpassed by Artificial intelligence systems. Nevertheless, we cannot be so sure of that; we just have to wait and see what the future brings.