AI is so good at coding that coders will now have to find other careers: Sridhar Vembu
It seems like AI is getting better at coding almost every day. After building a C compiler from scratch for Anthropic’s latest Cloud Opus 4.6 model, Zoho co-founder Sridhar Vembu believes coders may want to consider other career options.
The last few days have been much tougher for humans than for AI. Anthropic’s Cloud Cowork snatched billions of dollars of market cap from SaaS companies like TCS, and now the AI firm’s Cloud Opus 4.6 model has a built-in C compiler from scratch. At a time when tech companies are laying off employees due to this AI boom, Zoho co-founder Sridhar Vembu believes that coders can start considering new career options.
On X, Vembu quoted a post from a user who created a Bhagavad Gita app with AI. The user, Anish Moonka, said he didn’t know how to write code, but with AI tools from Anthropic and OpenAI, he was able to complete the app within a week.
Sridhar Vembu cited it as an example of “AI-assisted code engineering productivity”. The Zoho chief also pointed to Anthropic’s achievement of building a full C compiler using Cloud Opus 4.6. “This is by no means an easy engineering feat,” he wrote.
Don’t panic, but adopt AI for coding, says Sridhar Vembu
Sridhar Vembu acknowledged that given the advancement of AI in coding, it is time to look at new career options. But he didn’t want coders to worry.
He explained, “At this point, it’s best for those of us who depend on writing code for a living to start considering alternative livelihoods. I include myself in this. I don’t say this in panic, but calmly accepting and embracing it.”
Vembu’s comments come at a time when several prominent tech figures have acknowledged that the era of manually writing code may be over, including NodeJS creator Ryan Dahl. The Zoho chief described a session with Google’s Gemini Pro, where they discussed how the AI revolution could reshape the economy.
Sridhar Vembu claimed that the future could unfold in two ways: an optimistic one where “technology will make most of man’s technical ability redundant and that will push technology into the background and we will then focus on life.” This approach isn’t too far from Elon Musk’s future promises of progress in AI. And the second is a “pessimistic dystopian vision” with centralized control.