Will AI Replace Software Engineers? It Depends On Who You Ask
ZDNet, Monday, April 21st, 2025
Should software professionals be worried about their career prospects with the rise of AI agents? Industry observers' reactions to the potential impact of OpendddAI's latest innovation range from guarded pessimism to pragmatism.
Artificial intelligence (AI) will soon be performing the essential tasks of software engineers -- or so the experts say.
Sarah Friar, chief financial officer for OpenAI, proclaimed AI-as-software-engineer's emerging role at a recent Goldman Sachs conference. OpenAI's pending AI agent, called A-SWE (Agentic Software Engineer), "is not just augmenting the current software engineers in your workforce, but instead is literally an agentic software engineer that can build an app for you. It can take a [pull request] that you can give to any other engineer and go build it."