Indeed, our trade has changed forever, and more specifically, we might have to alter our operational workflows in the entire industry as well.
There are so many potential trajectories going forward for things to turn sour, I don't even know where to start the analysis. The level of sophistication an AI can achieve has no upper bound.
I think we've had a good run so far. We've been able to produce software in the open with contributions from any human on the planet, trusting it was them who wrote the code, and with the expectation that they also understand it.
But now things will change. Any developer, irrespective of skill and understanding of the problem and technical domains can generate sophisticated looking code.
Unfortunately, we've reached a level of operational complexity in the software industry, that thanks to AI, could be exploited in a myriad ways going forward. So perhaps we're going to have to aggressively re-adjust our ways.
I don't think trusting that someone wrote the code was ever a good assurance of anything, and I don't see how that changes with AI. There will always be certain _individuals_ who are more reliable than others, not because they handcraft code, but because they follow through with it (make sure it works, fix bugs after release, keep an eye to make sure it worked, etc).
Yes, AI will enable exponentially more people to write code, but that's not a new phenomenon - bootcamps enabled an order of magnitude more people to become developers. So did higher level languages, IDEs, frameworks, etc. The march of technology has always been about doing more while having to understand less - higher and higher levels of abstraction. Isn't that a good thing?
Until now, the march of technology has taken place through a realm which was somewhat limited or slowed down only by our advancements in the physical and cognitive realities. This has given us ample time to catch up, to adjust.
The cognitive reality of AI, and more specifically of AI+Humans in the context of a social and globally connected world, is on a higher level of sophistication and can unfold much faster, which in turn might generate entirely unexpected trajectories.
There are so many potential trajectories going forward for things to turn sour, I don't even know where to start the analysis. The level of sophistication an AI can achieve has no upper bound.
I think we've had a good run so far. We've been able to produce software in the open with contributions from any human on the planet, trusting it was them who wrote the code, and with the expectation that they also understand it.
But now things will change. Any developer, irrespective of skill and understanding of the problem and technical domains can generate sophisticated looking code.
Unfortunately, we've reached a level of operational complexity in the software industry, that thanks to AI, could be exploited in a myriad ways going forward. So perhaps we're going to have to aggressively re-adjust our ways.