Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says AI could replace Software Engineers in 6 to 12 months

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently remarked that software engineers may soon be redundant.

Anthropic CEO's take on AI replacing software engineers

In an interview with The Economist at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he stated that AI models could perform “most, maybe all” of what software engineers currently do within six to twelve months.

“I have engineers within Anthropic who say I don’t write any code anymore. I just let the model write the code, I edit it,” Amodei said.

His opinion sparked intense debate on social media.

One user wrote, “Software Engineering Will Be Automatable in 12 Months.”

“Yeah, we’re cooked.” Another said. “AI models will be able to do most, maybe all of what software engineers do end-to-end within 6 to 12 months, shifting engineers to editors.”

The Anthropic CEO admitted he was not completely certain how quickly the transition would happen, noting that some components, such as chip manufacturing and model training, cannot be automated as of now.

Drawing a parallel to the Industrial Revolution, the CEO explained how technology once helped humans work more efficiently.

“Machines, such as upgraded plows, enabled human farmers to be more efficient… This improved the productivity of farmers, which increased their wages."

But he warned that AI may not follow the same path: “It’s possible things will go roughly the same way with AI, but I would bet pretty strongly against it."

“We are entering a rite of passage, both turbulent and inevitable, which will test who we are as a species," he warned in his essay The Adolescence of Technology.

“AI will disrupt 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs over 1–5 years, while also thinking we may have AI that is more capable than everyone in only 1–2 years," Amodei wrote.

Before leading Anthropic, Dario Amodei served as Vice President of Research at OpenAI and worked as a Senior Research Scientist at Google Brain.

In a recent post on social media, Zoho's Sridhar Vembu advised software engineers to explore career alternatives beyond coding. He said, "At this point, it is best for those of us who depend on writing code for a living to start considering alternative livelihoods. I include myself in this."

Elon Musk suggested software engineering and traditional development could be radically transformed by AI systems that generate and manage code autonomously. On social media, he even talked about building an AI-based software competitor to Microsoft called “Macrohard.”

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