Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kappor take on the question of AI job losses through the lens of a profession that is uniquely suited to AI disruption - software engineering. In …
Why AI hasn’t replaced software engineers, and won’t
Coding agents as normal technology
Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
I don’t think there’s compelling evidence that using AI makes you less intelligent overall1. However, it seems pretty obvious that using AI to perform a task means you don’t learn as much about performing that task. Some software engineers think this is a decisive argument against the use of AI. Their argument goes something like this:
The Real Reason We Still Need Software Developers in the World of AI
The dream of AI churning out perfect production-ready code doesn’t hold up against the reality of modern software development.
Companies Are Blaming AI for Layoffs. The Real Reason Will Piss You Off.
180,000 tech workers lost their jobs in 2025. Companies say it’s because of AI. Oxford researchers call BS.
AI is removing the middle class of software engineering
AI makes projects with weak engineering culture fail much faster.
Arvind Narayanan on Twitter / X
To understand and empathize with how workers in many or most fields outside software experience advances in AI capabilities, I propose a little thought experiment. https://t.co/QZG24aRiBe— Arvind Narayanan (@random_walker) July 28, 2026
Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in — and they’re not good
Reliance on artificial-intelligence tools degrades the abilities of physicians and software engineers, studies show.
AI makes weak engineers less harmful
Like other kinds of puzzle-solving, software engineering ability is strongly heavy-tailed. The strongest engineers produce way more useful output than the average, and the weakest engineers often are actively net-negative: instead of moving projects along, they create problems that their colleagues have to spend time solving. That’s why many tech companies try to build a small, ludicrously well-paid team instead of a large team of more average engineers, and why so far this seems to be a winning strategy.
AI Is Quietly Changing Who Gets to Build Software
What If Universities No Longer Need Edtech Companies?
Companies That Tried to Save Money With AI Are Now Spending a Fortune Hiring People to Fix Its Mistakes
Companies that rushed to replace human labor with AI are now shelling out to have IRL workers to fix the technology's screwups.
AI Has Ruined the Job Market
Maybe flawed people were better than brute algorithms.
What do professional software developers need to know to succeed in an age of Artificial Intelligence?
Generative AI is showing early evidence of productivity gains for software developers, but concerns persist regarding workforce disruption and deskilling. We describe our research with 21 developers at the cutting edge of using AI, summarizing 12 of their work goals we uncovered, together with 75 associated tasks and the skills & knowledge for each, illustrating how developers use AI at work. From all of these, we distilled our findings in the form of 5 insights. We found that the skills & knowledge to be a successful AI-enhanced developer are organized into four domains (using Generative AI effectively, core software engineering, adjacent engineering, and adjacent non-engineering) deployed at critical junctures throughout a 6-step task workflow. In order to "future proof" developers for this age of AI, on-the-job learning initiatives and computer science degree programs will need to target both "soft" skills and the technical skills & knowledge in all four domains to reskill, upskill and safeguard against deskilling.
Recent Grads Say AI Is Making It Impossible to Find a Job
Recent college graduates are entering a job market fraught with austerity, and gatekept by the very technology degrading their prospects.
What Actually Happens When Programmers Use AI Is Hilarious, According to a New Study
As AI takes the programming world by storm, experienced devs are still the gold standard — and they're better off without AI assistance, too.
Tech companies are cutting jobs and betting on AI. The payoff is far from guaranteed
AI experts say we’re living in an experiment that may fundamentally change the model of work
