Software Engineers are in Denial About ChatGPT
Why don’t software engineers steelman the case that ChatGPT threatens their jobs? With thousands of articles and videos about Chat GPT daily, most developers are in denial. This article will discuss some of the counterarguments and deflections engineers give against ChatGPT and why so many developers can’t admit their jobs are at risk.
Today, I clicked on a YouTube video posted by a famous dev influencer about ChatGPT and why it’s not a threat. Their first analogy is that airline pilots fly fully automated planes, yet we still need the pilot. That is a poor and overused analogy. If autopilot suddenly stops working, a pilot has a finite amount of time to land the plane and save hundreds of lives. Some might argue that developers sometimes have a limited time to save a life. For example, in the medical industry, hundreds of doctors rely on an EMR (electric medical record) service, and if the system crashes, several lives are suddenly at risk. That is a compelling argument. However, it still needs to catch up. Every developer knows that software is brittle and crashes all the time. I would be highly concerned if an airline pilot counters that argument and says airplanes are also brittle and always crash. We see a crucial premise in the stark contrast between the two fields.
