Seventy-One Percent of Developers Fear They Will be Replaced by Generative AI

Santa Cruz, CA, July 20, 2023 --(PR.com)-- The global developer population fears AI will eventually leave them without jobs. Seventy-one percent believe they will be replaced by AI according to Evans Data Corporation’s recently released AI and Machine Learning Survey Report. Twenty-six percent of developers working specifically in the AI and machine learning field state that AI is already putting developers out of work. Another 40% of these developers believe AI will begin putting them out of jobs within a year.

Looking at generative AI, the Evans Data Corp. survey asked developers what use cases they thought would be first to gain traction with this technology. The top responses were code generation for applications and code for tools. These uses of generative AI are already ubiquitously being implemented across the tech landscape thus underscoring the reality of the developers’ fear of imminent replacement.

But it may not be all doom and gloom just for developers. Many voiced that other industries will also be significantly impacted by generative AI such as customer service chat and image generation for movies. When asked more broadly in which industries they thought AI would first replace humans all together, manufacturing and heavy industry, automotive and transportation, banking and finance, as well as telecommunications topped the list.

This list of non-tech-focused industries underlines a sentiment among some AI and machine learning developers that feel AI will not take their jobs. They believe that their roles require creativity which AI will never have; 34% feel this way. Other top opinions were that AI can only do what it is trained or told to do, and it does not have the people skills for teamwork and leadership thus making this role of developers irreplaceable.

These insights were obtained through an in-depth technical survey of global AI and machine learning developers to unearth the attitudes, adoption patterns, and intentions pertaining to AI and machine learning now and in the future. Evans Data Corporation’s just-released AI and Machine Learning Survey Report explores current AI and machine learning topics like NLPs, image recognition, foundation models, generative AI, inference models on edge devices, GPT vs BERT, hardware acceleration and memory needs, model portability and frameworks, and more.