At the recent World Government Summit in Dubai, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made a counterintuitive break with what he thinks is a long tradition of tech CEOs advising youngsters to learn how to code. Huang argued that, even at this early stage of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, programming is no longer a vital skill. With coding taken care of by AI, humans can instead focus on more valuable expertise like biology, education, manufacturing, or farming, reasoned the Nvidia head.
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, argues that we should stop saying kids should learn to code. He argues the rise of AI means we can replace programming languages with human language prompts thus enabling everyone to be a programmer. AI will kill coding.pic.twitter.com/SxK9twhEbyFebruary 24, 2024
You can see the exchange if you expand the above tweet. In the minute-long segment of Huang’s stage time shared on social media, the Nvidia CEO said that for 10-15 years almost every person sitting on a tech forum stage would have insisted that it is “vital” for young people to learn computer science, to learn how to program computers. “In fact, it’s almost exactly the opposite,” according to Huang’s counterintuitive sense.
“It is our job to create computing technology such that nobody has to program. And that the programming language is human,” Jensen Huang told the summit attendees. “Everybody in the world is now a programmer. This is the miracle of artificial intelligence.”
After his grand counterintuitive pronouncement, the Nvidia CEO surmised that people could instead learn the skills to become experts in more useful fields. Experts in domains like biology, education, manufacturing, farming, and so on could save the time they might have needed to learn computer programming for more productive pursuits. Thus, the only language people would need is the language they were born and raised to speak, and are already experts in.
However, people still need to know how and when to apply AI programming. Therefore Huang asserts at the end of the brief clip that “It is vital that we upskill everyone, and the upskilling process I believe will be delightful, surprising.”
With the above clip shared widely on social media, tech industry analyst Patrick Moorhead was stirred enough to comment. The top analyst pointed out to his Twitter / X followers, "For over 30 years, I’ve heard “XYZ will kill coding” yet we still don’t have enough programmers.” Moorhead listed several programming languages and tools that he said were supposed to kill coding – but clearly didn't.
Moorhead also drew parallels with the computer DTP revolution. He said that AI isn’t going to kill coding, but put it in the hands of more people. “Just like desktop publishing didn’t kill “creativity” it just expanded it.” While I agree that DTP and other digital art tools didn’t kill creativity, I don’t remember anyone suggesting moving from scalpels, Spray Mount, and scraps of paper to DTP would actually stunt creativity.
The impacts of AI on the (freelancing) job market - as seen so far
Only time will tell the actual impacts of the wave of AI applications that are set to appear in the coming months and years. However, a recent study of the volume of freelance work available since ChatGPT arrived was published by Bloomberry. This research shows that writing and translation freelancers have been hit hardest by AI rivals. Meanwhile, the numbers suggest software development jobs are up 6% since ChatGPT hit the scene.
