The paper is... how I put it mildly... not in the realm of making sense.
They mention simple question answering (which still stumbles at more complex even if structured questions), then code generators that existed since 1980s (at least) and then pretend that it's the same.
Today's AI is about approximating human judgment from datasets. The knowledge representation part, which is essential for tasks like coding, did not advance much since a decade ago.
This statement, however, takes the cake:
> Some early results from Facebook this year suggest that machines are capable of developing their own more efficient methods of communications
It's about the hype created by technically illiterate journos. (My TechCrunch piece on that: https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/06/the-secret-language-of-cha...) Could the authors have done some minimal due diligence before making this kind of claims?
Re subject, if anything, coding today requires much higher level of abstract thinking. Of course, there are tools for coding oompah loompahs too, like WordPress, but there is a lot of human decisions to be made there, too.