Former Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque has painted an alarming picture for programming jobs in the next few years. Mostaque says that there will be no more programmers in 5 years due to generative AI.
To emphasize his point, Mostaque said during a recent interview that more than 40% of all code on GitHub at the moment is made through generative AI. This is largely due to the recent introduction of Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot, which assists programmers in generating code through AI.
According to Mostaque, OpenAI’s ChatGPT is able to pass a level 3 programmer exam and it will soon be able to run natively on consumer devices such as laptops including MacBooks and smartphones. He believes it will happen as soon as this year. All of this leads him to believe that there will be no programming jobs necessary in 5 years.
Emad Mostaque has recently stepped down from his role as unicorn Stability AI’s CEO since he no longer agrees with his goals. He had also helped found the startup company and his departure made Stability AI the second big startup to go through major changes this week after Inflection AI.
According to a blog post from the startup, COO Shan Shan Wong and CTO Christian Laforte have been appointed as interim CEOs for the company since Stability does not have a permanent replacement for the chief executive role at the moment. Stability AI has previously been backed by investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners and Coatue Management.
In recent quarters, Stability AI has seen the exit of several pivotal team members, and now, Mostaque is departing to focus on decentralized AI. On X, previously known as Twitter, Mostaque shared his viewpoint that overcoming “centralized AI” cannot be achieved by further centralization. This comment targets the governance models of major AI startups, including OpenAI and Anthropic.
He also had the most number of controlling shares in the company, which is one of the reasons he decided to leave. The former CEO added: “We should have more transparent & distributed governance in AI as it becomes more and more important. It’s [sic] a hard problem, but I think we can fix it. The concentration of power in AI is bad for us all. I decided to step down to fix this at Stability & elsewhere.”