r/webdev • u/Proud-Confidence7290 • Nov 26 '23

Question Will AI decrease demand and salaries?

Hello everyone.

I am new to web development and it goes well so far.

I'm bit scared of AI development. Let's say you needed 10 developers for a project before ChatGPT and now you need 8.

With the development of AI, we will need even less.

Why do people think AI won't decrease demand and salaries of web developers? It's logic for me, what am I missing?

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u/BigBoetje Nov 26 '23

But development isn't really a job that can be really automated, is it? There's already a job that's solely responsible for translating what a client wants to actual requirement and even then it's less than ideal. What makes you think the input is gonna be good enough to provide proper output aside from short snippets?

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '23

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u/BigBoetje Nov 26 '23

A dev doesn't churn out code though? For every person you 'replace' by having ChatGPT churn out any kind of code, you need a new dev to check the code and apply it. The scale at which it's still usable is so small you just need a dev to place it. I can't trust ChatGPT to build anything but a very basic component and even then it tends to either fuck it up somewhere or it just copies it from some library so it would've been available anyways.

AI for devs are closer to having a welding robot. It might 'sort of replace' a welder, but now you need an operator for the machine with welding knowledge and to apply the finishing touches and fixes.

It's a tool. The only ones that complain about devs losing their jobs are non-devs or people that have jobs that can already be automated like a lot of data entry and some forms of data analysis. The kinds of jobs where you write a script to do in 1 hour what would take 8 hours of manual work, but you just don't tell your boss so you don't automate yourself out of a job.