Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has made a bold statement about the future of software engineering, stating that artificial intelligence (AI) will replace mid-level software engineers at his company this year, 2025.
In a recent interview on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Zuckerberg revealed that Meta is developing an AI system that can write code like a mid-level engineer.
“Probably in 2025, we at Meta, as well as the other companies that are basically working on this, are going to have an AI that can effectively be a sort of mid level engineer that you have at your company that can write code,” he said.
According to Zuckerberg, this AI system will be able to perform tasks traditionally done by human engineers, but with greater efficiency. He said,
“In the beginning it’ll be really expensive to run, then you can get it to be more efficient and then over time we’ll get to the point where a lot of the code in our apps and including the AI that we generate is actually going to be built by AI engineers instead of people engineers.”
Although, this development raises questions about the future of employment in the tech sector, the tech mogul acknowledged that hiring practices will change, but stopped short of saying that AI will replace human workers outright. He said,
“My view on this is like the future people are just going to be so much more creative and they’re going to be freed up to do kind of crazy things.”
This announcement comes on the heels of a series of changes at Meta earlier this year including plans to replace third-party fact-checkers with a community notes system, similar to Elon Musk’s X platform, and to reinstate more political content on the platform.
With these latest advancement in AI adoption, it is however worth noting that Meta is not the only company working on AI-powered coding tools. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has stated that over a quarter of new code at Google is generated by AI.
Additionally, research from Gartner suggests that 80% of the workforce will need to upskill by 2027 to accommodate the changing nature of the profession.
As AI takes on more responsibilities, the inevitable impact will be a decrease in the need for human engineers. While the exact effect on employment remains to be seen, one thing is certain: the future of software engineering will be shaped by AI.
