AI’s Growing Influence: A Software Engineer’s Dilemma

Hello everyone,

Today I want to share something that has been on my mind. I feel worried about how fast AI is growing and how it may affect people like us in the software field.

Does History Repeat Itself?

When I look at AI’s rise, I think about history and how human work has changed over time:

• Slavery – Long ago, people were forced to do physical work without rights or freedom. That time eventually ended.

• Contract Labor – Later, many people were sent abroad with false promises. They worked hard but often got no fair pay and could not return home. That too passed with time.

• Software Engineers – Then came our time. Schools and colleges prepared millions of people for IT jobs—coding, testing, and automation. For years, this was a respected and stable career.

Is the Software Era Ending?

Now it feels like our turn is coming to an end.

• Work that needed 10 engineers can often be done by 1 person using new tools.

• Instead of learning many programming languages, people can just give simple instructions, and software can create the code.

• Our role may become smaller—just checking and connecting things that machines build. One day, even this may not need humans.

This is worrying. What will new students who are learning computer science do? If one person can replace nine others with these tools, where will the rest go?

What About the Future?

No one knows for sure. Every big technology change has taken away some jobs but also created new ones. The same fear was there when computers and the internet came, but those changes gave us new careers and opportunities.

Maybe this time too, new roles will appear, like:

• People who give the right instructions to intelligent systems (Prompt Engineers).

• People who design safe and fair systems.

• People who make sure technology follows ethics and human values.

Final Thoughts

This is not the end of human work. It is the start of a new way of working. The challenge is not to resist change, but to learn how to adapt and work with it.

The big question is:
Will technology replace us, or will we grow into new roles that only humans can do?

The future is uncertain, but if we prepare and adapt, we can make it our partner, not our enemy.