Can AI Fully Automate Software Engineering?

This article explores the possibility of AI fully automating software engineering. Current AI excels at specific coding tasks, surpassing human engineers, but lacks reliability, long-context understanding, and general capabilities. The authors argue the key lies in learning algorithms being far less efficient than the human brain, and a scarcity of high-quality training data. Future breakthroughs will involve combining large-scale human data training with reinforcement learning, creating richer, more realistic reinforcement learning environments to enable AI to possess human-like online learning abilities. While AI will write most code, software engineering jobs won't disappear immediately; instead, the focus will shift to tasks harder to automate like planning, testing, and team coordination. Ultimately, full automation means AI can handle all human responsibilities on a computer—a goal potentially far more distant than simple code generation.