DIGHUM lectures: Why GenAI Won’t Replace Software Engineers

Speaker: Alexander Pretschner, Technical University of Munich & Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation (bidt) Moderator: Carlo Ghezzi, Politecnico di Milano, Italy Generating code with LLMs is surprisingly and increasingly powerful, prompting the question if we can expect humans to be out of the loop anytime soon. My answer is no to replacement for professional software engineers (and trivially yes to assistance). The argument is twofold and relies on two necessary distinctions: that software engineering is not just programming; and that software engineering ranges from writing scripts over implementing websites to building complex interconnected cyber-physical systems. The main argument is that software is a design artifact that embodies many architectural and technical decisions – traditionally taken (hopefully explicitly!) by engineers who understand and design the trade-offs. That is, some human needs to say what they want and which option they prefer – and this is not the realm of machines. Secondly, and once again depending on the context, software development projects often fail because it is outright impossible to state the requirements upfront. Agile software development processes embody that observation into an incremental process where what one wants is fully understood only while the system is built. And again, humans want the system to be built, not machines. A discussion of the influence of risk classes and productivity gains rounds off the argument. About the Series A roughly bi-weekly seminar offers presentations and panels from worldwide thought leaders. It is typically held on Tuesday afternoons at 17:00 CET. The bidt and the TU Wien are cooperation partners for the DIGHUM lecture series. Digital Humanism deals with the complex relationship between man and machine. It acknowledges the potential of Informatics and IT. At the same time, it points to related apparent threats such as privacy violations, ethical concerns with AI, automation, loss of jobs, and the ongoing monopolisation on the Web. For this reason, a new initiative — DIGHUM lectures — started with regular online events to discuss the different aspects of Digital Humanism. We will have one or more speakers on a specific topic followed by a discussion, or panel discussions, depending on the topic and speakers. The exact dates will be announced at least two weeks before. Participate via Zoom Zoom | meeting: 9638 9928 143, password: 0dzqxqiy Participate VIA YouTube Talk will be live-streamed and recorded via YouTube Archive and Resources of Lecture Series Abstracts, Recordings, and Slides from Previous Talks