I’m not suggesting AIs can replace senior engineers (I don’t want to be replaced!)
But, senior engineers can supervise the AI, notice when it makes suboptimal decisions, intervene to address that somehow (by editing prompts or providing new tools)… and the idea is gradually the AI will do better.
Rather than replacing engineers with AIs, engineers can use AIs to deliver more in the same amount of time
Which I think points out the biggest issue with current AI - knowledge workers in any profession at any skill level tend to get the impression that AI is very impressive, but is prone to fail at real world tasks unpredictably, thus the mental model of 'junior engineer' or any human that does its simple tasks by itself reliably, is wrong.
AI operating at all levels needs to be constantly supervised.
Which would still make AI a worthwhile technology, as a tool, as many have remarked before me.
The problem is, companies are pushing for agentic AI instead of one that can do repetitve, short horizon tasks in a fast and reliable manner.
Sure. My point was AI was already 25% of the way there even with their verbose messy style. I think with your suggestions (style guidance, human in the loop, etc) we get at most 30% of the way there.
But, senior engineers can supervise the AI, notice when it makes suboptimal decisions, intervene to address that somehow (by editing prompts or providing new tools)… and the idea is gradually the AI will do better.
Rather than replacing engineers with AIs, engineers can use AIs to deliver more in the same amount of time