Mike Blake/Reuters
Generative AI has some workers worried that it'll take their jobs. But before that, it looks like it's making some software engineering tasks a lot easier.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy revealed in a LinkedIn post on August 22 that the company was able to integrate Amazon Q, its generative AI assistant, into its internal systems to update its foundational software.
The result has been a "game changer," Jassy said.
"The average time to upgrade an application to Java 17 plummeted from what's typically 50 developer-days to just a few hours," he wrote. "We estimate this has saved us the equivalent of 4,500 developer-years of work (yes, that number is crazy but, real)."
The AI is not only fast but seems pretty accurate, too, according to his post. Amazon developers shipped 79% of the AI-generated code reviews without any additional changes, Jassy wrote.
"The benefits go beyond how much effort we've saved developers," he said. "The upgrades have enhanced security and reduced infrastructure costs, providing an estimated $260M in annualized efficiency gains."
Jassy's comments seem to tie into a often-used argument when it comes to AI: that it helps free up time otherwise used on boring but necessary jobs.
"One of the most tedious (but critical tasks) for software development teams is updating foundational software," he wrote. "This work is either dreaded or put off for more exciting work—or both."
But while Amazon may be enjoying the increased productivity, developers might be concerned about its efficiency potentially reducing the need for human workers.
Amazon Web Services' CEO Matt Garman recently said in an internal meeting that software engineers may have to develop other skills with the proliferation of AI in coding.
"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," he said.
And Garman is not the only top executive to express this warning. Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang has said that "everyone is a programmer now" because of AI coding tools. Emad Mostaque, Stability AI's former CEO, even predicted that there would be "no programmers in five years."
Developers are not the only industry being hit with a potential extinction scare. Klarna's CEO, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, said in a now-deleted tweet that the fintech firm will save $10 million this year by using generative AI to do the marketing work human employees previously did.
"We're spending less on photographers, image banks, and marketing agencies," he wrote. "Our in-house marketing team is HALF the size it was last year but is producing MORE!"
Although Siemiatkowski received intense backlash, a press release backed his enthusiasm for AI, saying that Klarna has "generated over 1,000 images in the first three months of 2024 using genAI, reducing the image development cycle from 6 weeks to just 7 days."
U.S. Bank CMO Michael Lacorazza previously told Business Insider that the company was able to use generative AI to "shave about two and a half months off" their development cycle for a new brand campaign.
Despite the impressive efficiency increases, Lacorazza made it clear to reassure workers that he views generative AI as "not a replacement for humanity but an enabler for humanity."
Meantime, Jassy said that Amazon will continue using Amazon Q in further operations.
He said, "Not only do our Amazon teams plan to use this transformation capability more, but our Q team plans to add more transformations for developers to leverage."
