Will programmers pivot to other careers as AI tools improve

Read time: under 4 minutes

Welcome back, Superhuman

Coding has emerged as one the most valuable use cases for AI — Github’s Copilot coding assistant is reportedly one of the few AI products that does $100M in annual revenue. But are a new wave of AI breakthroughs bad news for programming jobs?

TODAY’S MENU

• Will AI help or hurt coding professions?

• How to translate and dub videos with accurate lip sync

• A tiny island nation wins big in the AI boom

• Chart: Consumers’ use of AI products on desktop vs. apps

• 5 new AI tools to boost your productivity

• AI Generated Images: Famous generals taking selfies during battle

NEWS

Today in AI & Tech

• Shopping Around: Apple reportedly met with Chinese tech giant Baidu to discuss a potential plan to use the firm’s generative AI in Chinese iPhones.

• Inflection Point: After poaching most of Inflection AI’s 70 employees, Microsoft agreed to give the startup $650 million as it pivots to a new business model.

• MidJourney Metaverse: The image-generation startup MidJourney is reportedly building a new AI model that can create fully-explorable 3D worlds.

• Voice Clone Verdict: Tennessee became the first state in the US to pass a bill that forbids AI from copying a musician’s voice without his or her permission.

• Goodbye Stability: Emad Mostaque, Stability AI’s CEO and founder, resigned in a shock announcement that is shaking up the AI giant.

NEXT IN AI

How recent AI breakthroughs will impact programming

Studying computer science used to be one of the safest bets to land a high-paying job after college. That reputation still stands: according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the field will keep growing by 23% in the next decade.

But Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently made a prediction that turns that estimate on its head: He thinks programming degrees may be a thing of the past. Last month, Huang warned that kids shouldn’t spend too much time learning how to code — because that task will soon become automated with AI.

Huang, of course, isn’t an unbiased observer. Nvidia just announced NIM — essentially a toolbox filled with different AI models that companies can use to build new software without coding expertise. 

Nvidia has plenty of competitors:

• Microsoft researchers just published AutoDev, a platform they say can automatically complete intricate software development projects with the help of AI.

• Cognition’s Devin AI specializes in solo coding projects, which might work best for startups that want to build new products from scratch.

• Even LLMs that weren’t explicitly designed for coding — think Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude — are getting pretty good at it and can help with basic programming tasks.

What might the future look like? Huang thinks that eventually, firms will ask a super-AI to deploy teams of smaller AIs for help with various coding tasks. It means that programmers — and their super-AI partners — would act more like orchestra conductors, ensuring that each AI knows its parts and can harmonize with its companions.

But this prediction makes a bold assumption — that coding is the only thing programmers do. “The thing is, software engineering is not about copy/pasting code. Software engineering is the development and manipulation of mental models of problems and their solutions,“ observes François Chollet, one of the leading AI engineers in the world.

AI AT WORK

How to translate and dub videos with accurate lip sync

Need to translate your content for sales and marketing abroad? Or maybe you want to translate content in foreign languages to your native language?

Try the process below:

• Go to Pipio’s translation tool website and sign up

• Upload your video

• Pick the language you want the video translated to

• Click submit and wait for the video to be translated

• Save the video if you need to use it for later

AI ABROAD

The tiny island nation at the center of the AI boom

Anguilla won the domain name lottery. There’s “.uk” for the United Kingdom, “.cn” for China, and “.br” for Brazil. But Anguilla, a Caribbean nation of just 16,000 situated east of Puerto Rico, had the good fortune of getting assigned “.ai” as its country code during the early days of the internet.

How does it work? 

• Recently, troves of tech startups have been trying to buy ".ai" domains to showcase their AI products.

• Each time a registry sells an address ending in “.ai,” Anguilla gets a portion of the transaction. 

• The country makes between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars per sale, according to a New York Times report. 

• Those funds quickly add up: Last year Anguilla brought in $32 million — or about 10% of its GDP — in domain fees.

Where’s the money going? Because Anguilla is so small, the surprise cash infusion can make a big difference. It’s been able to bounce back more quickly from a devastating 2017 hurricane. It now gives free healthcare to citizens 70 and over. And it’s renovating its airport and sports facilities. “Some people call it a windfall,” Anguilla’s premier, Ellis Webster, told the Times. “We just call it God smiling down on us.”

What next? By all accounts, Anguilla can expect a similar amount of cash this year, as AI startups clamber to buy up sites with its namesake domain. In terms of revenue, it might just beat out another lucky domain holder — Tuvalu, a Polynesian archipelago whose “.tv” domain brings in about $10 million a year.

CHART

Consumers’ preference for using AI products on desktop vs. apps

A recent Sensor Tower analysis shows that ChatGPT users have a strong preference for interacting with the platform on the web, rather than via an app. Those who use the popular chat app CharacterAI, on the other hand, tend to use the app far more often than the web version.

Consumers now spend 36 minutes more minutes per day on phones compared to desktops, meaning that more mobile generative AI apps could be around the corner, according to Andreessen Horowitz.

PRODUCTIVITY

5 AI Tools to Supercharge Your Productivity

Craft: Ideate, collaborate and share notes, documents and more with your team.

Cherry: Use screenshots or images to help find and discover new products with this AI-powered shopping tool.

Section*: Free, 1-hour event from Section on how investors pick AI startups to invest in, featuring General Catalyst's Christopher Kauffman. RSVP here.

Vapi: An AI application that lets developers build, test and deploy voicebots in minutes rather than months.

PageGenie: Create high-quality SEO content for your brand — at scale — with the help of AI.

^{* indicates a promoted tool, if any}

AI GENERATED IMAGES

Famous generals taking selfies during battle

Acquire new customers and drive revenue by partnering with us

Superhuman is the world’s biggest AI newsletter for businesses and professionals with 600,000+ readers working at the world’s leading startups and enterprises. Companies like Amazon, Calendly, and Notion feature their products in Superhuman. Main ads are typically sold out 4 weeks in advance. You can book future ad spots here.  

🧞 Your wish is my command

Reviews of the day

Thanks for reading.

Until next time!

Zain

p.s. if you liked this newsletter, share it with your friends and colleagues here. For questions and feedback, email us at [email protected]. We always listen and respond