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Microsoft Research Developing An AI To Put Coders Out of a Job (mspoweruser.com)
jmcbain writes: Are you a software programmer who voted in a recent Slashdot poll that a robot/AI would never take your job? Unfortunately, you're wrong. Microsoft, in collaboration with the University of Cambridge, is developing such an AI. This software "can turn your descriptions into working code in seconds," reports MSPoweruser. "Called DeepCoder, the software can take requirements by the developer, search through a massive database of code snippets and deliver working code in seconds, a significant advance in the state of the art in program synthesis." New Scientist describes program synthesis as "creating new programs by piecing together lines of code taken from existing software -- just like a programmer might. Given a list of inputs and outputs for each code fragment, DeepCoder learned which pieces of code were needed to achieve the desired result overall." The original research paper can be read here.
The humans that develop these machines have the idea that if they build machines to do the mundane work for them, the humans will have more time to pursue labors of love. Unfortunately, the humans that think this way don't seem to care that the majority of other humans think that if you're not in a traditional 9-5 office job your value to society is null (yes I do realize that retail, service, and infrastructure building positions fall into this null category; this is deliberate).