Despite the very rapid advances of AI, most working in the tech industry believe that it will never fully replace humans. At least not yet. AI may be good for repetitive tasks, may have capacity to process data at speeds we can’t even wrap our brains around, but it can only do so much, for the rest, humans will still be needed. That is what we keep telling ourselves.
Following the hype that ChatGPT caused, many who had previously believed that AI couldn’t be creative started reconsidering whether their professions might be at risk after all. Developers using AI have been training it to get smarter, act in a more human way, understand natural language and to learn from how humans interact. The intent has been to create greater levels of efficiency, but are we teaching AI too much?
One of the leading trends for 2025 is Agentic AI – that’s automated, self-thinking, decision making AI. With AI already coding for developers, is this the beginning of the end, or is it merely an evolution that will see developers using their skills in different ways?
Of course, this is the view of more seasoned developers who will be able to adapt relatively easily. They understand tech, plus they’re the ones who have been driving much of AI’s development. It’s junior development jobs that will go, they say. The mundane jobs that take little skill or experience – AI is much better at it – or will be once trained.
But is no-one seeing the glaring oversight here?
Those seasoned developers weren’t always experienced. They had to get there by learning the basics, and doing the mundane tasks to understand how to develop software. At some point in their careers, they had to start as junior developers.
If AI is to replace junior developers, what will happen when senior developers want to retire? There will be a massive skills gap. If there are no humans being trained up to know what senior developers know and think like they think, in order to develop new technologies, will the only option left, be AI?
In tech especially, we love to innovate. That’s at the very heart of what developers do. And why some believe we’ll never really be replaced by AI. Developers don’t just create code, they find solutions to business problems by creating technologies. But what happens when we stop developing the human skills to innovate and instead train AI to do it?
It’s very unlikely that in future, companies will start to say no to more technology. It makes life too convenient, more productive and more profitable. And isn’t that the goal of business?
Or is it to deliver value to humans?
As we continue to venture forward with AI, so enamoured with our ability to create, are we losing sight of what the real goal is here? Will we end up innovating ourselves out of a future?
