People replaced by AI? “Lack of imagination”, says DeepMind leader

NIn recent times, thousands of people have been laid off in several technology companies because of the advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Among the most recent examples are Cloudflare, PayPal and Meta, which stated that these decisions are linked to investments made in this technology.

This, however, is a vision that does not seem to make sense to Demis Hassabis, responsible for the Artificial Intelligence division at Google DeepMind. In an interview with Wired magazine, Hassabis stated that it is still too early to say that the software engineering profession is under threat.

“I think this shows a lack of imagination and a lack of understanding about what is really going to happen,” explained the executive.

According to Hassabis, instead of replacing professionals with Artificial Intelligence tools, companies that want to gain efficiency should take advantage of this technology to expand the capacity of the teams they already have.

“From my point of view — and also from the point of view of Google and DeepMind — if engineers are three or four times more productive, then we want to do three or four times more things,” he said.

“I have millions of ideas, from discovering new drugs in the laboratory to game design. I would love to have engineers available to work on these types of projects.”

Hassabis also said he doesn’t understand the narrative that a career as a programmer or software engineer will no longer be viable in the future.

“I have no idea why people are so certain about this,” he said. “Maybe there are other interests behind this narrative — like getting more investment or something else.”