Much is being said about the impact of artificial intelligence on the software landscape. AI is all set to transform the SaaS industry, if not replace it. A report by Boston Consulting Group has suggested that 50 to 55% of US jobs are expected to be reshaped by the end of 2026. Further more, 30% of developers expect that AI will take over their coding work. However, it is currently viewed as a tool for creating, rather than just replacing, roles. Sridhar Vembu – Chief Scientist at Zoho, who has been vocal on the subject, recently shared his views on the matter.
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“Here is what I tell our software engineers on how to thrive in the AI era: be very good domain experts. Programming skills are the foundation (and we definitely don’t want to lose them) but deep domain knowledge is what customers pay for, along with reliability, security, support and compliance. The productivity gains from AI are still hotly debated: we definitely get to a working prototype much faster but a finished product has a lot more to it and not all the stages can be sped up by AI,” he said stressing on the importance of deep domain knowledge.
He further added: “That is why I advise our technical teams to not obsess about programmer productivity as a metric but focus on how we can offer a far better experience to customers using AI. There is a lot of needless or incidental complexity in software that can be eliminated by AI.”
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He has also stated in the past that as AI gets smarter, it will also get cheaper. “Any sufficiently powerful universal machine can be used to make a new version of itself. It can also be used to design a more resource efficient version of itself, unless it is already at peak efficiency but biology shows that is not true. This is why as AI gets smarter, it will also get cheaper,” he said. Reports also suggest that 40% of programming tasks could be automated by the year 2040, with 80% of software engineers needing to reskill. “I tell our engineers “We must forget our past success and focus on transforming ourselves for the AI era”,” Sridhar Vembu has said.
