‘Humans are just decision-makers now’: AI found the bug, built the fix and left engineers staring in shock

The technology sector has seen multiple layoffs, hiring freezes and conversations concerning artificial intelligence in the last couple of years. There is, however, an oncoming shift that is currently happening in the way engineers view their profession. The debate is no longer about the threat of job losses but about the value of work done when artificial intelligence can execute specific tasks which were previously done by teams of engineers.


Professionals in the technology field had chosen software engineering as a career path due to the thrill of solving problems, coding and developing products. These individuals are now faced with the prospect of artificial intelligence executing some of these tasks. There is excitement and apprehension at the same time as businesses reap the rewards of increased productivity. This development begs the question of the relevance of humans in a space where machines are faster at executing certain tasks.

The subject matter becomes more pertinent in a market where the fear of losing jobs is already a reality. There is also the doubt concerning whether such tasks can be entirely automated in the future.

A recent discussion on Reddit made it clear that the issue is being faced by many. A user described a scenario where an engineer joined an incident call where a few of the best minds in the company had gotten together to solve a technical issue. Although there was progress being made, the process was painstakingly slow. The engineer chose to bring in an artificial intelligence system which had parsed data from integrated systems to come up with the root cause of the problem.


While the humans were still debugging and triaging the situation, the AI had already generated a pull request which had the potential to be rolled out as a hotfix. The user shared that the situation offered perspective since instead of getting engaged in the nitty-gritty of the technical details, the human input had been redirected to asking the right question, assessing the response and picking the appropriate action.

Let's take an example of an emergency room in a hospital. Doctors, nurses and different specialists are all trying to figure out what is wrong with a patient. Suddenly, the diagnostic system goes through all the relevant data and comes up with a likely cause of the problem within a short time. Although the doctors make the final call, the entire process has been expedited owing to a machine which could process information much faster than humans.

Engineering has always valued speed and agility. Software engineers are often expected to be quick at getting their code into production or solving technical issues. Artificial intelligence threatens to make some humans redundant if coding tasks can be automated.

On the same Reddit thread a user shared their experience: “I had the same thought today, I was working with Kiro , and all I had to give it my jira number. It searched across all the repos where the code exists made the changes, wrote test cases and I was just reviewing the code , I'm no more a developer but a code reviewer now”


“This is the part people are missing. AI isn't replacing the guy who can type code, it's making judgement/context the actual job. The scary bit is juniors learn judgement by doing the grunt work though” wrote another user.

“Engineers with good system design and architecture knowledge will be the most in-demand now. Solution architect specifically” explained the third user.

The reality is that the analytical and decision-making abilities of humans will be valued over those who can type faster or have better coding skills.

Senior engineers had gotten to where they were by being better at specific tasks such as solving certain technical issues faster. Although they might not have been as good at coding or designing systems, their judgment had been honed by years of experience. They could detect potential problems at an earlier stage and were better at system design and architecture.

The junior counterparts would often take on smaller issues just to gain some experience. This would also equip them with the practical application of theoretical concepts they learned in school. The automation of these repetitive tasks which would have provided the much-needed experience to juniors will have the opposite effect in near future.


It is safe to assume that businesses will want the new normal to involve as much artificial intelligence as possible. It is, therefore, a matter of time before these organizations can identify what skills will be relevant for engineers.

Engineers will need to acquire other skills to make themselves relevant and stand out from the crowd. It is a known fact that individuals with similar technical skills will always be in greater supply than those with niche skills. It will be necessary for such professionals to invest time in being competent in other areas of work.

In addition, workers will need to understand how to work alongside artificial intelligence. This will be an important skill in the future as they will need to know how to ask the right questions and challenge the responses to ensure that nothing is missed or wrong.