What Should AI Do For Us?
In the 8 semesters of my Computer Science bachelor's, the entire landscape of software engineering has completely changed. The same month I started college, GitHub released Copilot in VS Code. I didn't even make it through my second semester before ChatGPT came on the scene. Professors were totally blindsided by this new, free, and untraceable cheating method—by the time anyone knew how to detect it reliably, students realized how to evade the detectors through some additional prompting. At this point, I'm convinced that basic prompting skills and a ChatGPT account will get you through most assignments of your Bachelor's degree without raising an eyebrow. So what's the value of my degree?
Some would say it's flat-out worthless. Others might say that while I may no longer be needed to write code, AI still requires someone to guide it, review its outputs, lend it perspective, and make decisions it cannot. While those things are true now, I don't believe I can count on them to be true for much longer. My value as a software engineer (and maybe the soul of the craft itself) will continue to diminish, and I still have my whole career ahead of me. As coding agents become more prevalent, it’s becoming harder to imagine roles that don’t quietly assume AI assistance to meet growing productivity expectations. It's become a bit of a catch-22. Software Engineers are expected to know how to use coding agents to produce more, but this will stifle their own skills and leave them dependent on coding agents to get anything done. When writing a whole SQL query becomes as easy as pressing tab, the neural pathways needed to accomplish the former cease to be necessary, and so they will atrophy. In this way, AI acts like a brain crutch. What the AI does for us, we will forget how to do ourselves. And when the skills are gone, the salaries, titles, and possibly even the position itself become unjustifiable. I fear we might just vibe code ourselves out of the job. The most senior engineers will surely survive the longest since they already possess the skills, and it will take some time before they might forget. But what are us Junior engineers who are just now developing those skills supposed to do?
When it comes to our brains, it's use it or lose it. The only way we will stand to have talents worth hiring for in the future is by continuing to use our skills with intention, rather than allowing the AI to take over when a task is inconvenient. I believe we can use AI more like a coach than a crutch. Instead of having it do things for us, we can have it coach us through harder challenges, allowing us to grow our skills much faster and reach our full potential. All engineers may have to use AI in the future, but I believe it is important for our careers that the bulk of our capabilities as engineers remain independent from AI. If we want to keep up in this massive reshaping of the industry, we can't just let the wave take us; we need to remain in control of it. We need to ask ourselves, "What should the AI do for us?"