I’ve just finished listening to this podcast with the founders of https://www.factory.ai/. Their startup automates away the drudgery bits of work in software engineering. That includes writing tests, debugging, documentation, and migrations.
I found the views of the founders compelling. For example, they don’t think AI will replace software engineers en mass and suddenly. Instead, we are likely to see gradual automation, task by task. For example, Factory.ai has bots that can automatically review code changes; they have a bot that can rewrite code and improve it; and they also have bots that can plan larger projects.
What they aren’t building, and what isn’t yet achievable, is a fully autonomous AI software engineer. We are still some way away from that and companies that are attempting to build such systems will probably struggle to create real business value. (Hint: Those systems aren’t yet reliable!)
I found the podcast insightful and it’s worth a watch if you’re interested in the automation of work or are building a company in the space.