A lot of recent headlines have proclaimed the end of software engineering as a profession because of AI, and current and prospective computer science and software engineering students are understandably concerned about their careers. In this Q&A, Cheriton School of Computer Science Professor Mei Nagappan separates fact from fiction.
Professor Nagappan’s recent research applies machine learning and large language models to core software engineering challenges, including bug localization, vulnerability detection and automated test generation. His work critically examines the real-world effectiveness of AI-powered developer tools. His papers have been published in top venues including ICSE, ASE, FSE, and IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.
Is AI ready to replace software engineers? Is this all hype?
The first thing to know is that there’s a lot of hyperbole on both ends of the spectrum: from the skeptics who say AI is a scam that’s going to go away, and from the businesspeople and frontier model companies who say AI will replace everyone’s jobs and run every aspect of society.
The truth, of course, is somewhere in the middle. These are very impressive tools, and in the last decade there have been exponential jumps in their abilities. But we have reasons to believe those abilities are plateauing, and the large language models we have right now are far from being able to replace humans.
Read the full article on Math News.