The Code Canaries Are Singing — Our Path Toward AGI

How the fate of human software developers reveals our path toward AGI

You may have heard, humans are going out of business. First on the list: software developers.

As of today, there are nearly 30 million software developers in the world. I couldn’t believe it, but actually, the numbers have been steadily creeping up at single-digit growth annually for decades now.

Then again, more recently, software jobs in the US have actually been on the decline since COVID-19 and don’t seem to be reversing based on the stable trend.

Given that ChatGPT only came out long after this downward trend started, it’s not yet driven by AI. It's more likely caused by efficiency-seeking corporations moving American jobs to lower-cost remote offices in India.

In terms of AI impact, various AI tools such as Github Copilot are already being used by most developers. The only question is how much value is being added. Sam Altman says 300%, some say more like 3%. The median is probably closer to the latter, but those magic moments where the thing you want just magically appears and works on the first go are possible today.

Sidebar: Why pick on developers specifically? Well, somehow it just turns out that LLMs take…