How does AI affect programming?
my two cents about how AI affects modern programming
If you ask a lot of programmers or other people in this space if you should study Computer Science, they would probably advice against it. I am sure this is a for a multitude of reasons, but one of them is certainly the rise of AI-assisted programming. Why learn to code when a fancy LLM can do it for you?
The Problem with LLMs
If you were to ask an AI to solve a new problem, a task that has never been done before, it probably couldn't do it. These language models take the information that they were trained on and spit out some variation of it. Social media clone? Product page? Task manager? No problem, those already exist, just change the styling. The same logical approach can be applied to every new Twitter clone, no new thought needs to be created. But try to build the software behind a self-driving car and you will run into issues. Nobody has figured out the solutions to every problem with that, and thus and LLM can't create new ideas.
I am no expert on AI, but this is certainly how I have always understand it. I wouldn't be surprised in a few years, maybe within the decade, AI has advanced to a point where it can solve problems nobody has ever thought of before, but I don't think we are there yet.
You can argue that humans aren't much better than this, just applying knowledge to new situations. However, LLMs can't even really do that. They don't think, they just predict the next word. And if it isn't likely for that word to come next, it won't say that. In other words, it can't "think outside the box".
So what can they do?
LLMs are still incredibly powerful, but as tools, not a magical solution. They free up time for developers to focus on the bleeding edge, relegating the mundane website design or new mobile app to the AI, under supervision of course. It doesn't end the technology sector as we know it, it just changes it slightly, allowing people to focus on new ideas, not just repeating what already exists.
What do you think AI will do to the technology world? I certainly am not sure, but whatever happens, it is coming quick.