I'm pretty sure you've all heard about the famous new AI hype and that it's going to replace us all But will it really?

Well, I just happened to become a software engineer by accident, and I've been working with AI for a while now. So, let me share my experience so far.

As you may have already realized, this will be an opinionated topic. This is only my personal opinion and not factual.

I'm a Software Engineer at an F500 multinational company, my tech stack is Node.js related, and we're actually working on an AI Customer Service Chatbot right now.

First of all, we have a coding copilot AI on our company computers, but it's heavily restricted, likely for security reasons, and frankly, it’s almost completely useless—it’s so limited that it’s hardly worth mentioning.

ChatGPT: You're probably familiar with ChatGPT. For relatively simple tasks, it’s pretty useful. But if it doesn’t get it right within the first few tries, it likely won’t be able to solve the problem we're facing, no matter how many times you ask. You also need a solid understanding of the topic to make good use of it—if you don’t, it is the gate to hell.

Other Coding AIs: On my personal computer, I use other AI tools for coding. At the moment I use Codium. It's a free coding AI but actually pretty useful. This, I believe, is the most interesting part. These tools can be really useful, though they tend to struggle with large codebases and a lot of contexts.

But will it replace us? Yes. No. Yes and No. It will definitely change many industries. However, with more code, there will be more software, and with more software, there will be bigger competition and higher expectations for quality. So I think the amount and quality of software will only increase in the future. I give us like 20 years before AI starts fully replacing us. However, before that happens, I definitely see an AI bubble explosion similar to the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s. These tools have incredible potential, and I believe these products will be great. The hype is just too early. But I also think AI will plateau again, as it did before, and the hype will die down due to unfulfilled prophecies, which will cause investment declines.