DevelopmentWill AI replace web developers? What's the future of web development?
Chat GPT launched a year ago on November 30, 2022. It caused quite a stir, with numerous companies trying to implement it in their day-to-day operations as quickly as possible. Some went as far as to consider replacing their human workers with artificial intelligence. This includes software houses, many of which were looking to cut their spending.
Would doing so be beneficial in the long run? Sure, AI can tell you a joke, answer simple questions, or write a high-school essay, but is it capable of replacing human developers?
When did it really start?
In order to properly understand the topic at hand, let's dive into the humble beginnings of GPT-3. You might not be aware of this, but if you started using GPT-3 only a year ago, you were already years behind the curve.
GPT-3 was first published in 2020. Back then, it could already write code and help you write simple articles. Thousands of companies were able to test it out early on. The only thing that you needed to do was to apply for early access.
In its early stages of development, GPT-3 could be used with the help of a simple interface. It looked like something straight out of 2010, but it got the job done.
Of course, the things GPT-3 was capable of producing three years ago were nowhere close to what GPT-4 can provide you with right now. No matter what you were using GPT-3 for, you had to put in a lot of time and effort to make it make sense.
GPT-4 is not ideal, though. It's a solid upgrade, but it's nothing more than a language model. It's perfectly capable of not making sense.
In 2022, chatting with AI became commonplace.
A year ago, many people first discovered GPT-3 thanks to Chat GPT. Powered by machine learning and natural language processing, it entertained millions of internet users around the world.
In due time, thousands of companies around the world began to come up with different ideas for incorporating artificial intelligence into their day-to-day operations. To give an example, a customer support team might have started using GPT-3 to answer basic customer inquiries.
In 2023, AI is everywhere.
It's safe to say that artificial intelligence is the future of quite a few industries. It has already been integrated with a number of different platforms, from project management tools to entire search engines.
Artificial intelligence effectively changed the way software developers work. Obviously, you can ask it to generate code for you. The said code isn't perfect. In fact, it often requires a bit of tweaking to work.
Is it frustrating? It can be. Is it worth the hassle? Absolutely. In most cases, tweaking code takes less time than writing it from scratch. With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that the majority of developers out there use AI-powered tools for code generation.
Taking care of repetitive tasks
Aside from automated code generation, artificial intelligence can help you take care of repetitive tasks. To give an example, it could help you write reports.
You just need to describe what you want the report to look like. The tool you're using will write it in mere seconds, giving you the time and energy you need to focus on something more interesting.
Streamlining business communication
Answering e-mails can get boring pretty quickly. Luckily, you can just ask GPT-4 to do it for you.
The language model will help you put together a coherent and convincing message. Then, if you feel like it doesn't sound quite right, it will modify its tone and contents as many times as you want. How cool is that?
Brainstorming ideas
Last but not least, you could use artificial intelligence to brainstorm ideas.
Don't know how to tackle an issue related to a project you're working on? Want to find the best way to ask for a raise? No matter what kind of problem you're dealing with, artificial intelligence would probably be more than happy to help you solve it.
Is AI replacing web developers?
So, is artificial intelligence going to replace developers? Maybe, but it will take some time. Right now, artificial intelligence lacks many crucial things that it needs to truly replace human developers.
First of all, we should ask ourselves one important question. Can GPT-4 or any other language model really be called a form of intelligence?
It was fed hundreds of thousands of lines of code. Then, it spotted and memorized the patterns present in the said lines. What it can do is follow a pattern.
It lacks a deep understanding of the principles and intricacies of what the code it's generating is about. As a result, it's more than likely to fail when tasked with something difficult.
Is it creative?
Aside from not being able to genuinely understand what it's doing, artificial intelligence doesn't really have the capacity to create truly innovative solutions.
What it produces is more or less the average of every single line of code that it was fed when it was being trained. As a consequence, it doesn't really know how to come up with genuinely groundbreaking ideas.
A human, on the other hand, is more than capable of doing just that. We can arrive at the weirdest conclusions in the most convoluted ways imaginable.
Can it fulfil user needs?
It's worth noting that artificial intelligence doesn't really understand how you think. It doesn't understand the people you're creating digital products for, either. It lacks things like emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and problem solving skills. For that reason, it might have trouble navigating through various challenges during the development process.
Think about emotionally demanding endeavors, such as addressing very specific user needs or managing client expectations.
A human will instinctively understand what the other side wants. A language model will just try to replicate what it saw in its training data in relation to a similar situation.
It's not going to come from a place of genuine understanding or creativity. As a result, it's likely to end up being terribly bland, boring, or, in the more complicated scenarios, overly simplified and inadequate when used to address the problem at hand.
Is it reliable?
It's worth noting that artificial intelligence falls short on reliability and accountability.
It's not going to own up to its mistakes. It's not going to try its best to meet an urgent deadline.
As we've already mentioned, it doesn't have a genuine understanding of things like urgency or duty or shame. It's not going to care about negative feedback.
A dry or mildly apologetic acknowledgement is the best it can do.
You could argue that humans are the same way, but are we really? We are social animals, and we want other people to trust us, to accept us, to appreciate what we're doing. If we don't think about it consciously, we will just end up doing it subconsciously.
In case you don't really care about other people's opinion, you're still likely to feel obligated to do things right. You don't want to get fired, right? You have bills to pay and food to buy.
A machine, though? It doesn't need to eat. It doesn't need to have a roof over its head. Why should it care? It doesn't have a will to live anyway. If you stop using it because it made one too many mistakes, it's not going to care.
Can AI design as well as humans?
When it comes to front-end website design, many designers question whether artificial intelligence can match human creativity and aesthetic sensibility.
Honestly, it can't. It can come up with something average, but it's unlikely to create something truly striking. For that reason, it's best treated as a tool for brainstorming and testing different ideas. Having it come up with a bunch of different design ideas on the fly is better than sitting in front of a blank computer screen for hours on end.
AI and web development projects go well together.
To sum up, artificial intelligence revolutionized website development. However, its limitations prevent it from effectively replacing human beings. It might become more capable in a couple of years or decades, but right now? Not really.
In our opinion, artificial intelligence should be treated as a helpful tool. The Adchitects team perceives it as such, and the same goes for many different development teams around the world.
It's a state of affairs that's subject to dynamic and constant changes, though. We can only guess what awaits us in the years to come.
