Featured Image Credit: Bloomberg / Contributor / DREW ANGERER / Contributor / Getty
They warned us that artificial intelligence would be coming for our jobs, but more than just writers, customer service workers, and data entry professionals, others are learning their jobs are being overtaken by AI.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been grabbing headlines thanks to sweeping changes that confirm the company is loosening its rules on free speech, and now, he finds himself back in the news with more controversy.
As reported by Business Insider, Zuckerberg plans to automate coding jobs before the end of 2025.
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Speaking on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast where the tech entrepreneur fired shots at Apple, Zuckerberg explained: "Probably in 2025, we at Meta, as well as the other companies that are basically working on this, are going to have an AI that can effectively be a sort of midlevel engineer that you have at your company that can write code."
Business Insider notes that the average midlevel engineer earns mid-six figures, and although an AI replacement will be expensive to get off the ground, there will be savings in the long run.
Zuckerberg added: "In the beginning, it'll be really expensive to run, and you can get it to be more efficient.
“Over time it'll get to the point where a lot of the code in our apps and including the AI that we generate is actually going to be built by AI engineers instead of people engineers."
Arguing that this AI push will 'augment' workers, he continued: "My view on this is like the future people are just going to be so much more creative and they're going to be freed up to do kind of crazy things."
It's important to note that Zuckerberg hasn't specifically outlined any layoffs. Still, he dodged the issue when Rogan pushed on whether jobs would be lost.
Zuckerberg continued to champion his new regime, saying that most people would've been farmers 150 years ago but that figure now sits at around 2%. He says that the history of technology has always suggested advancements will lead to certain jobs going obsolete, although we're not sure the Meta workers who are in danger of losing their jobs will see this as a good thing in terms of evolving the human race.
With potential layoffs at Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, coding is poised to go from a highly sought-after role to one that's surplus to requirement. Zuckerberg hopes that Meta will reach a point where all coding within its apps and even the AI it generates will be done by AI itself. That definitely sounds like the Dead Internet Theory to us, especially as Meta was already under fire due to plans to flood Facebook with AI accounts and replace real users with bots.
Meta's coders aren't the only ones at risk, and while not being replaced by AI, those who work on the company's DEI initiatives could also be shown the door. Janelle Gale, Meta's vice president of human resources, sent a memo to staff saying: "We will no longer have a team focused on DEI."
Even though Zuckerberg points to how other tech giants are automating their jobs, that's unlikely to take the sting out of a potential wave of layoffs as we're replaced by AI.
