I mean was he really wrong? As models like OpenAI Codex get more powerful over time, they will start eating into large chunks of dev work as well...
Unlike artwork, precision and correctness is absolutely critical in coding.
Accomplishing that is achieving general AI.
In the meantime, there are plenty of boilerplate ORMs and simplistic API template tools that make production of bog standard CRUD apps dead simple. Of course, they all have their drawbacks and trade-offs, and aren't always suitable. But I don't see the amount of software engineering work reducing as a result of these no-code, low-code tools, do you?
As I see, the real challenge to solve is for it to be able to hold context and be able to communicate iteratively. Also, as you say find missing gaps. That's important. Other than that, you tell it what you want, it creates something and then you tell it to change things around. Which is, BTW, pretty similar to how it works with biological life based developers. Though as we're lazy, we like to clarify a lot of things up front (and either drive customers crazy or teach them that this is the way it works). If you have an AI that spits out code in a few minutes, it may not matter a lot.
Most of the programming jobs are indeed about making relatively simple stuff from standard components.
Let me know when you find a single programmer who can do that reliably.
Bytecode -> Assembly -> C -> higher level languages -> AI-assisted higher-level languages
Above a certain threshold of ability, yes.
The same will hold true for designers. DALL-E-alikes will be integrated with the Adobe suite.
The most cutting edge designers will speak 50 variations of their ideas into images, then use their hard-earned granular skills to fine-tune the results.
They'll (with no code) train models in completely new, unique-to-them styles--in 2D, 3D, and motion.
Organizations will pay top dollar for designers who can rapidly infuse their brands with eye-catching material in unprecedented volume. Imitators will create and follow YouTube tutorials.
Mom & pop shops will have higher fidelity marketing materials in half the time and half the cost.
All will be ever as it was.
At some point AI will become as powerful as companies.
And then AI will be able to sustain positive feedback loop of creating more powerful company like ecosystems that will create even more powerful ecosystems. This process will be fundamentally limited by available power and the sun can provide a lot of power. Eventually AI will be able to support space economy and then the only limit will be the universe.
We will be united with the AI, we're already relying on it so much that it has become a part of our extended minds.
What's this in reference to?
The space for "AI-assisted higher-level languages" sufficiently distinct from natural language is vanishingly small. Eventually you're just speaking natural language to the computer, which just about anyone can do (perhaps with some training).
AI that can write code from a natural language description doesn't help as much as you seem to think if natural language description is too hard to actually bother with when humans (who obviously benefit from having a natural language description) are writing the code.
Now, if the AI can actually interview stakeholders and come up with what the code needs to do...
But I am not convinced that is doable short of AGI (AI assistants that improve productivity of humans in that task, sure, but that expands the scope for economically viable automation projects rather than eliminating automators.)
Evolution doesn't stop for anyone, don't think like a dinosaur.
You thought climate change is hard to hold up? Try holding up the invention of AI. The whole world is going to have to change and some form of socialism/UBI will have to be accepted, however unpalatable.
Claiming AIs are going to take over or destroy the world has been a basis of "AI safety" research since the 90s, but that isn't real research, it's a new religion run by Berkeley rationalists who read too many SF novels.
Also, one thing that everyone seems to ignore is that even if the number of jobs are not reduced, the skill/talent level for doing those jobs may (actually DO) increase and also, switching careers does not work for everyone. So you'll inevitably have people without a job even if it's just that the job market is shifting.
But I argue that as automation reaches jobs with higher levels of sophistication, i.e. the jobs of more skilled workers, some people will simply be left out because of their talent won't be enough to do any job that has not been automated.
So, today some good AI applications are face detection, fingerprint detection, or generating art. Where you need to catch or generate the general gist of it without pixel precision.
Of course, programming might be under greater threat than we imagine. I can also not claim that anyone holding that position is just plain _wrong_. But I do believe that would take an AI breakthrough that is yet to happen. That breakthrough would also have absolutely crazy consequences beyond programming, because now we would have "exact AI" and the thought of that boggles my mind for sure.
Algorithm space is large and guess-checking through it takes a lot of effort even when it’s automated like now. It requires huge amounts of compute. And meaningful progress requires the combined effort of the entire worlds intellectual and compute resources. It sounds implausible at first but this machine learning ecosystem is in fact subject to sanctions. There are extreme but plausible ways of reducing the stream of progress to a trickle. It just requires people to actually wake up to what’s happening.
But the reverse is not true, they won't be able to properly vet a piece of code generated by an AI since that will require technical expertise. (You could argue if the piece of code produced the requisite set of output that they would have some marginal level of confidence but they would never really know for sure without being able to understand the actual code)