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Big Tech Engineers Have An AI Problem
Coding and engineering as a service are putting an end to the golden age of software engineering
We’re now two years in to the AI era. During that time, it’s simultaneously exceeded expectations and come up short. AI models are becoming smarter at frightening speeds — tasks that were hard to do for the earliest models are now second nature for the latest ones. Yet (fortunately), most of us seem to still have jobs. The dystopian future where all of our jobs are automated by AI seems not to have happened yet.
Part of the reason is, despite all the advances, business leaders still treat AI with skepticism. There’s real fear that a rogue AI will go off the rails and start producing bad data or giving terrible advice — so most companies still prefer that there be humans in the loop. It’s much easier to yell at and place blame on humans versus AIs when things go wrong.
One sector that’s not holding back in its ambitions to eliminate the human from the loop is tech, especially big tech. Unsurprising given that they’re the ones investing hundreds of billions of dollars on GPUs, data centers, and foundation models.
Never since basically the software industry began have engineers been so at risk of being commoditized. In the past, engineers were seen…
