IBM CEO Doesn't Think AI Will Replace Programmers Anytime Soon (techcrunch.com)
- Reference: 0176695135
- News link: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/25/03/12/1448242/ibm-ceo-doesnt-think-ai-will-replace-programmers-anytime-soon
- Source link: https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/11/ibms-ceo-doesnt-think-ai-will-replace-programmers-anytime-soon/
"Are there some really simple use cases? Yes, but there's an equally complicated number of ones where it's going to be zero," Krishna said during an onstage interview at SXSW. He argued AI will boost programmer productivity rather than eliminate jobs. "If you can do 30% more code with the same number of people, are you going to get more code written or less?" he asked. "History has shown that the most productive company gains market share, and then you can produce more products."
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/11/ibms-ceo-doesnt-think-ai-will-replace-programmers-anytime-soon/
The real pain will start (Score:2)
The real pain will start when corporations discovers that with AI you'll hamper the growth of new fresh programmers getting training on how to code by starting with the simple cases that the AI can do.
Those cases are often easy but gives new programmers a lot of training in the corporate culture and coding style as well as a stepping stone in their growth. No programmer is ripe for the high profile advanced cases right out of university.
Makes sense (Score:2)
There is no need for more than five mainframes anyway.
IBM Granite (Score:1)
If we had to use IBM's Granite LLMs, I would be just as pessimistic. Fortunately there are other, more capable companies working on this.
Could very well be right. (Score:2)
But I expect he'll be burned at the stake for saying it. Daring to say anything other than, "The entire workforce will be replaced by AI in $x years" where $x is some number
Re: (Score:2)
> But I expect he'll be burned at the stake for saying it. Daring to say anything other than, "The entire workforce will be replaced by AI in $x years" where $x is some number
Thanks, Slashdot, for only taking the first little bit of my post when I clicked submit.
Rest of the comment: < 20. Based on what I've seen in AI output of code, he's more right than the people saying AI will replace all coders in the next few years. But daring to say that out loud will likely have a lot of management types throwing a complete conniption, because the promise has been made that the workforce *will* be replaced by AI ne the next decade or so, and anyone daring to say otherwise is considered
For once, complementing AI (Score:2)
I usually blast AI for being nearly useless, or having a very specific use case, making general assertions useless. Yesterday, the 11th of March 2025, SonarQube underlined some code, that might be 5-years-old. I was reading the description of the message, and couldn't see how I didn't do exactly what SonarQube said. I right I clicked "the more" option, and there was a "fix with AI" option. Upon pressing it, it showed me the fix and explained the error, and it was RIGHT.
The fix it provided actually r
IBM's ML/AI is closest to replace programmers, soo (Score:2)
IF any company is close to have ML/AI to replace programmers is IBM, as, unlike the current wall street darlings, they have been at it longer, and with great emphasis in domain specificity (i.e. ML/AI specifically trained for law, ML/IE specifically trained for health, ML/AI specifically trained for programming, etc).
If the guys who are closest say that it will take a long time, barring a susprise discovery somewhere, I think will believe them...
JM2C, YMMV
The hard parts still murky (Score:2)
This one is hard to call because AI is very good at analyzing and echoing code patterns for both debugging and code generation. However, the code ultimately still has to be vetted by humans for non-trivial apps, and there will be plenty of edge cases where the human has to do most of the work anyhow.
And some devs will struggle using AI effectively while others will zoom high and wide. The ratio of the first to the second is still an unknown.
Remember how much promise self-driving cars showed about 15 years a
AI developers (Score:2)
Writing code is a VERY small part of software. Lets SI AI find code issues in a multi software package real work usage case and fix them on the fly.....
right on (Score:1)
"there is a world market for maybe five computers" [Thomas Watson Sr.]
Webbrowser are for consumers, Lotus Notes for Enterprise (in meaning] [Irving Wladawsky-Berger, early IBM Internet Division VP on web browsers] IBM WebExplorer was canceled ...
Re: (Score:1)
He actually is right on. His claim wasn't for the future of AI, just as the "maybe five computers" wasn't for the future of computing. 20-30% of code being written by computers in -- as stated in TFSummary -- three to six months is a bang on prediction and all the snark in the world won't make it happen any sooner. Furthermore taking coding from the level of "do a great job in programming competitions" to "do a decent job in the real world" will require something close to AGI. I'm predicting
all decent code
Re:"Market for only 5 computers" (Score:2)
Tom perhaps was technically right if those five computers were gigantic with gajillion cores, which IBM would be happy to make and sell.
Do note that although it's hard to confirm Bill Gates actually said "640k is enough", there are other quotes that suggest he was indeed surprised by how quick devs bloated up their software to use up all 640.
Gates was forced to practice tight DRY, YAGNI, and KISS to make early MS software, but a parsimonious approach was soon abandoned by the industry, because they could. B
Re: (Score:2)
Do note that although it's hard to confirm Bill Gates actually said "640k is enough"
Gates never this this. The origin of this quote was John Roach (Tandy CEO) and referred to the memory on the TRS-80 Model I. The press at the time thought the machine didn't have enough memory (or was too expensive for what memory you got), and Roach retorted that ({some amount} of memory should be enough...).
Re: (Score:1)
Okay, but my point still stands that he was surprised at how fast it was used up. I can't find the "surprised" quotes just yet, but have seen them before.
Re: right on (Score:2)
Why are people like you so willing to overestimate what can be done with current AI? You just sound like a person that reads too much science fiction.