Microsoft CTO Anticipates AI will Generate 95% of All Code in the Next 5 Years

Kevin Scott, Microsoft's Chief Technology Officer, has made a bold prediction: within the next five years, AI will generate 95% of all code.Despite this significant shift, he believes that human developers will continue to play an important role in the software engineering process.

During an appearance on the 20VC podcast, Scott discussed how AI would take over the majority of code writing, stating that "very little is going to be line by line human-written code." Nonetheless, he clarified that AI will not completely replace human involvement. Scott believes that while AI will handle the heavy lifting of coding, the essential and creative aspects of software engineering—authorship and problem-solving—will remain in human hands.

Scott, who has been programming for over 40 years, compared the current shift to one he witnessed as a child in the 1980s. He recalled how programmers used to debate the "true" nature of coding, with some claiming that knowing Assembly language was the only way to code.He observed that such views faded over time as the industry shifted to higher-level programming languages.Scott believes that the increasing reliance on AI in coding will follow a similar trajectory.

Scott agrees that AI will change software development in a big way, but he doesn't think it will replace the need for qualified human programmers. Rather, he views AI as a tool to make coding more accessible and to lower barriers to entry. "Think about this as sort of raising everyone's level," Scott told the crowd. He went on to say that artificial intelligence will allow more people to code for simpler tasks like creating websites, eliminating the need for specialised developers.

Scott, on the other hand, stated that human expertise would continue to be necessary for more complex problems. "If you are trying to solve the world's hardest computational problems, you're going to need computer scientists," he told me. These highly skilled programmers will be able to use AI tools in sophisticated ways to address problems that AI alone cannot solve.

Scott also discussed how AI will reduce the need for teams to anticipate and create code specific to user needs. Instead, users will be able to create solutions using AI tools. This could streamline development processes by eliminating many of the current intermediary roles.