This first-person text is based on an interview with Rohan Gore, a 38-year-old AI engineer at Reach3 Insights, a market research company based in Vancouver. His identity and employment were verified by Business Insider. The text has been edited for length and clarity.
I started out as a typical software engineer, working on interesting and complex problems in marketing research. Now I'm an AI engineer.
I have mixed feelings about the impact of AI on the software engineering industry.
In December, I completely handed over all my coding tasks to the AI and it handled them really well. At first I didn't feel good about it. I've been programming for so long and back then I realized that coding is basically a thing of the past.
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I haven't written a line of code since then. This is the new reality of my work. However, just because AI has taken over my programming tasks doesn't mean I can spend all day outdoors.
I am still able to – and expected to – deliver the same level of results and quality of work. Sometimes I feel burnt out because there is pressure to do moreeven though artificial intelligence can take over some tasks.
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I'm excited about AI and I like how it has changed my work
At this point, AI needs a lot of safeguards and I believe that my experience and systems knowledge still make me very useful.
I'm glad I haven't coded for three months because there are a lot of things I do – like architecture and software design – that won't go away. AI can help with design, but it still requires a lot of guidance. This makes software engineering knowledge more important than ever in the AI era—at least for now.
There's also a lot of systems thinking that needs to be applied – something I really like and fully agree with, so this is a good stage for me.
I've been programming for years and ultimately it's just a means to an end. I never saw it as anything on the “rocket science” level. But There are many nuances to coding that can be frustrating and tiring at times. That's why I like this new era.
AI also allows me to conduct much more research and do it faster. It allows me to question product decisions and think more, rather than just getting things done. As an engineer, I was constantly under pressure to deliver, and now I have more freedom and can even be critical of the product manager's actions because I understand the decisions being made. It helps me take on a broader role in product engineering, which I really enjoy.
I'm glad I can work at such a pace, because it was impossible before. It's amazing that I can create a feature in two or three days instead of a month. This is a huge change that makes me happy and excited.
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I'm worried about the future
Even though I like the current situation, there's always a thought in the back of my mind: “What's next?” Technology is getting better every day. I'm not comfortable with the idea of AI operating completely on its own indefinitely. I don't know what I would do then.
It's a strange feeling that work has changed so much. Sometimes I'm speechless. I have many thoughts and emotions inside me. Most of it is excitement, but the more I think about it, the more it turns to fear. Sometimes I feel intimidated because these systems are so powerful.
I even openly said on the company Slack that there is no chance that I will write anything even 10% better in my life. as good as these systems. Ultimately, if you look at the typical problem, most people can't solve it – unless we're talking about the 1%. geniuses.
Sometimes I feel defeated because programming was a skill I developed over the years and it took me a lot of time to get to the level where I was really good. It's not that I don't like this change, but there is a certain fear associated with it.
What happens if everything becomes completely automated and people just ask AI to do things?
The above text is a translation from American edition of Business Insider
