Will AI Replace Software Engineers? What Anthropic CEO Said

As the world comes to grips with the gargantuan growth of artificial intelligence and the threat it poses to the job market, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has some career advice for young professionals.

In a conversation with Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath, Amodei said that jobs that are human-centred represent an opportunity, while things like coding and engineering are becoming more AI-focused.

Speaking to Kamath, Amodei said that he felt coding would go away first, but in the long run, software engineering will also be affected.

What Dario Amodei Said On AI Replacing Software Engineers

According to Amodei, software engineering will be done by AI models, “in the elements of design or making something that's useful to users or knowing what the demand is, or managing teams of AI models, those things may still be present.”

He explained that comparative advantage was a powerful tool, and even if people were doing five per cent of the task since AI is doing the other 95 per cent, one can be 20 times more productive.

There are opportunities for professions that are human-centred, related to the physical world and analytical skills, or mix them together, he said.

Citing an example of a radiologist, Amodei stated that while artificial intelligence has gotten better at doing scans than radiologists, only the highly technical part of the job has gone away. He added that radiologists still walk patients through the scan and talk to them, indicating that there's still a demand for the underlying human skill.

“Now, that may not be true everywhere. And perhaps, over time, AI will advance in areas where it hasn't yet advanced. And maybe that'll happen fast. But I think what I will say is, we should take it one step at a time, right? This is a very empirical science. This is a very empirical observation. Let's see what AI does today, and we'll kinda try and adapt to... kinda try and adapt to that,” he said,

The Anthropic chief also told Kamath that “anything where you're building on AI, like, if AI is the tailwind, if you can be part of some other part of the supply chain, something in the semiconductor space, which, I think, is, that's one example. It has an element of a kind of physical world and more traditional engineering, not software engineering.”

Dario Amodei On What's Most Important For Success

The entrepreneur said that having critical thinking skills in a world where artificial intelligence can generate or create anything would be the most important thing for success. He mentioned that while Anthropic does not make models that generate fake images or videos, fraudulent content can make it hard to tell what's real and what's not.