- Elon Musk predicts coding will be obsolete by the end of this year due to AI advancements
- AI tools now autonomously write, test, and deploy software without human coders
- Entry-level coding jobs dropped 35% as companies adopt AI programming tools
Coding for a long time was considered a top career choice, until recently when AI tools such as Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex changed the game. As autonomous terminal assistants, they don't just suggest the next line of code; they actively navigate entire software architectures, run tests, and deploy fixes on their own. The fact that the profession hasn't been the same since these tools broke into the scene is well-known. But now Tesla and xAI founder Elon Musk has come out and said traditional coding may be dead by the end of this year.
"I think actually things will move maybe even by the end of this year to where you don't even bother doing coding. The AI just creates the binary directly and the AI can create a much more efficient binary than can be done by any compiler (a type of computer program that converts code from one programming language into another).
"So just say create the optimised binary for this particular outcome and you actually bypass even traditional coding. That's an intermediate step that actually will not be needed probably by... I'd say the end of this year," Musk opined at a conference.
Entry-level coding jobs have indeed dried up as companies increasingly rely on these tools. A report published last month by Revelio Labs and the World Economic Forum showed a 35% drop in entry-level job postings; software development and programming jobs were among the hardest hit.
Last year, Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei had said AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and cause unemployment to rise to 10% to 20%.
Amodei, who often speaks on AI's societal impact, has called for the need to pause or slow down its development. Last year he had said, "On the jobs side of this (AI), I do have a fair amount of concern." However, as Anthropic looks to list on the stock exchanges and go public Amodei has recently tweaked his stance on AI-linked job loss and said it may actually expand the work people do.
