Some workers worry that generative AI will take their jobs. But before that happens, it looks like it could make some software engineering tasks a lot easier.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy revealed in an August 22 LinkedIn post that the company has integrated its AI-generated assistant, Amazon Q, into its internal systems and updated the underlying software.
Jassy said the results were a “game changer.”
“The average time to upgrade an application to Java 17 has been dramatically reduced from the typical 50 developer-days to just a few hours,” he wrote. “We estimate this has saved the equivalent of 4,500 developer-years (yes, that’s a crazy number, but it’s true).”
According to his post, the AI is not only fast, it also appears to be pretty accurate: Amazon developers shipped 79% of AI-generated code reviews without any additional changes, Jassy wrote.
“Beyond the amount of developer effort saved,” he said, “the upgrades will improve security, reduce infrastructure costs, and generate estimated efficiencies of $260 million per year.”
Jassy’s comments seem to tie into a commonly used argument about AI: that it can free up time spent on boring but necessary work.
“One of the most tedious (but important) tasks for software development teams is updating the foundational software,” he writes. “This task is either loathed, or put off for more exciting work, or both.”
But while Amazon enjoys increased productivity, developers may worry that the efficiencies will reduce the need for human workers.
Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Gurman said in a recent company meeting that software engineers may need to develop other skills as AI becomes more prevalent in coding.
“If we look 24 months from now, or even further out – I can’t predict exactly when that will be – it’s possible that most developers won’t be coding,” he said.
And Gurman isn’t the only top executive to voice this warning: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said that thanks to AI coding tools, “everyone’s a programmer now.” Former Stability AI CEO Emad Mostakeh has even predicted that “in five years, there will be no programmers.”
It’s not just the development industry that’s under threat: In a now-deleted tweet, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said the fintech company could save $10 million this year by using generative AI to handle marketing tasks previously performed by human employees.
“We are spending less on photographers, image banks and marketing agencies,” he wrote. “Our in-house marketing team is half the size it was last year, yet producing more!”
Simiatkowski received strong backlash, press release Klarna confirmed its enthusiasm for AI by saying, “Using genAI, we generated over 1,000 images in the first three months of 2024, reducing our image development cycle from six weeks to just seven days.”
U.S. Bank CMO Michael Lacolazza previously told Business Insider that using generative AI enabled the bank to “shave about two and a half months off” the development cycle of a new brand campaign.
Despite the impressive efficiency gains, Lacolazza reassured workers by making it clear that he sees generative AI as “an enabler of humanity, not a replacement for humanity.”
Meanwhile, Jassy said Amazon will continue to use Amazon Q in future operations.
“Not only will the Amazon team be leveraging this conversion capability further, but the Q team will also be adding more conversion capabilities for developers to leverage,” he said.