OpenAI o1 might be the final nail in coding's coffin — "If OpenAI's o1 can pass OpenAI's research engineer hiring interview for coding at a 90-100% rate, why would they continue to hire actual human engineers?"

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As earlier predicted, coding might be dead in the water with the prevalence of AI and the launch of OpenAI o1 with advanced coding capabilities.

Closeup computer code on screen, Man programmer, software developer coding and programming on laptop.
(Image credit: Getty Images | Krongkaew)

What you need to know

  • OpenAI recently launched a series of new next-gen AI models with advanced reasoning capabilities across coding, math, and science.
  • Per benchmarks shared, OpenAI o1 and o1-mini are exceptionally great at coding and have passed OpenAI's research engineer hiring interview for coding at a 90-100% rate.
  • This raises more concern among professionals and the security of their jobs with the rapid prevalence of AI and its capabilities. 

Is artificial intelligence just a fad, or it's on the verge of the biggest technological breakthrough? Over the past few years, AI has taken center stage at major tech companies, including Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, NVIDIA, and more. 

Incidentally, early adoption of the technology and integration of AI across their tech stack has propelled most of these companies to the top of the food chain, each having a brief taste of the world's most valuable company with over $3 trillion in market valuation.

Despite AI's high demand for electricity and cooling water and rising concern among investors, companies continue to forge forward with their AI efforts. OpenAI was reportedly on the brink of bankruptcy within the next year, with projections of $5 billion in losses. 

However, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Apple will participate in another round of funding to keep the ChatGPT in business, pushing its market capitalization well beyond $150 billion. 

Microsoft's latest Work Trend Index report indicated that contrary to popular belief, AI creates job opportunities, but executives won't hire anyone without an AI aptitude, prompting "a 142x increase in LinkedIn members adding AI skills like Copilot and ChatGPT to their profiles."

In the recent past, coding among other creative jobs is seen as the first profession on AI's chopping block. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang predicted that coding might be dead in the water as a career for the next generation with the prevalence of AI. Instead, he recommended exploring opportunities in other areas, including biology, education, manufacturing, or farming. 

Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman echoed Huang's sentiments:

"If you go forward 24 months from now, or some amount of time — I can't exactly predict where it is — it's possible that most developers are not coding."

OpenAI's new advanced reasoning models blow engineers out of the water

OpenAI's new AI model - OpenAI o1 (Image credit: Getty Images | Visual China Group)

And now, it's quite possible that AI could reshape the coding landscape and claim jobs from developers — especially after OpenAI recently launched a new series of next-gen AI models (aka Strawberry) with advanced reasoning capabilities across science, math, and coding. OpenAI o1 and o1-mini are reportedly exceptionally great at writing and detecting errors in code.

In an interview, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati discussed the rapid prevalence of AI and its impact on the job market. Murati indicated that while AI is creating job opportunities, it's also rendering some professions redundant:

"Some creative jobs maybe will go away. But maybe they shouldn't have been there in the first place — you know, if the content that comes out of it is not very high quality."

In the same breath, a separate report claims the banking sector could be on AI's chopping board next, with approximately 54% of jobs susceptible to automation. OpenAI's GPT-4o model launched during the Spring event spotted similar capabilities, but OpenAI o1 and o1-mini are seemingly more advanced. 

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Kevin Okemwa
Kevin Okemwa
Contributor

Kevin Okemwa is a seasoned tech journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya with lots of experience covering the latest trends and developments in the industry at Windows Central. With a passion for innovation and a keen eye for detail, he has written for leading publications such as OnMSFT, MakeUseOf, and Windows Report, providing insightful analysis and breaking news on everything revolving around the Microsoft ecosystem. You'll also catch him occasionally contributing at iMore about Apple and AI. While AFK and not busy following the ever-emerging trends in tech, you can find him exploring the world or listening to music.

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4 Comments Comment from the forums
  • fjtorres5591
    Too much hype and pearl clutching, not enough understanding of the limits of neural nets.
    Maybe this will help:
    5eqRuVp65eYIn a nutshell, neural networks models, no matter how large, how complex, how well-trained, converge on a similar error rate that is far from non-zero. No clear answer yet but it appears to be due to the nature of language or the neural network approach or both.

    They all level off at an errot rate well above the reliability required of mission critical software. So while AI processed code might theoretically be marketable for gaming there are entire industries were only human vetted code will be acceptable. That is where human coding will survive: some body will have to tell the model what to do and then verify it actually does what it is supposed to do.

    As always, the truth about AI software remains that it won't be software that puts people out of work but other people making better use of software. AI is a tool learn to use it to your benefit or face the consequences. Causevthe djinn will not return to the bottle.
    Reply
  • CadErik
    Kevin's articles lack some depth and go for catchy titles. Not only the errors, but the AI will just spit out code it learned from existing open-source codes which is not always accurate or even good. I'm sure today's AI could replace some jobs, but this would not be any better than an average junior developer. I do not have a single doubt that the AI will pass interviews, or the turing test but these do not require to solve actual problems. Not saying this won't change in the upcoming years but wording in Kevin's articles is not accurate.
    Reply
  • fergdoug
    Magical thinking. You know, that feeling or intuition that, it's not yet perfect, but it will get better and better, just you wait and see.

    Find 30 minutes to spare and read this: https://www.wheresyoured.at/subprimeai/
    Reply
  • FraJa
    fergdoug said:
    Magical thinking. You know, that feeling or intuition that, it's not yet perfect, but it will get better and better, just you wait and see.

    Find 30 minutes to spare and read this: https://www.wheresyoured.at/subprimeai/
    https://www.wheresyoured.at/subprimeai/ ==> That's obscurantism, typical... but also tainted by a "We are the so special humans" etc. and a lot of ... bias and beliefs! yes, like always.

    I'd suggest spending hours on this: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/lab/ai-frontiers/ It's Microsoft Research, the biggest scientific institution about computing and a wide range of topics. It's not R&D, nor Apple Marketing, scientists publishing etc. They have a lot of interesting things to say (and they might not talk about MS at all)....

    And 1o has reasoning abilities that a minority of people have, in some places (where education exists and is organized, otherwise, that wouldn't be fair), a very very small part of the population ....
    Reply