A hot potato: The role of AI in the future of programming has become a hot topic among tech industry leaders. During a recent interview at the SXSW conference, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna weighed in on the debate, asserting that AI will not replace programmers anytime soon. Instead, he believes AI will serve as a powerful tool to enhance their productivity, enabling developers to work more efficiently.
Krishna estimates that AI could write 20 – 30 percent of code but emphasizes that its role in more complex tasks will remain minimal.
His views contrast with more optimistic predictions from other industry leaders. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, has forecast that AI could generate up to 90 percent of code within the next three to six months. Meanwhile, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has suggested that his company may stop hiring traditional engineers by 2025 due to AI-driven productivity gains.
However, Benioff also underscores the importance of human expertise and is actively reskilling Salesforce's workforce to collaborate effectively with AI tools.
Krishna's perspective aligns more closely with Benioff's, emphasizing that AI will enhance productivity rather than eliminate programming jobs. He explained, "If you can produce 30 percent more code with the same number of people, are you going to get more code written or less?" Krishna believes this increased efficiency will drive market share gains and fuel the development of new products.
As a company deeply invested in AI-powered solutions, IBM has positioned AI as a complementary tool rather than a replacement for human programmers. While Krishna has previously mentioned pausing hiring in back-office roles that AI could automate, he now underscores AI's augmentative role in creative and technical fields.
Drawing historical parallels, Krishna compares today's AI debates to past concerns over calculators replacing mathematicians or Photoshop making artists obsolete. He acknowledges unresolved challenges, such as intellectual property issues surrounding AI training and outputs, but sees AI as a net positive, improving product quality across industries.
"It's a tool," Krishna stated. "If the quality that everybody produces becomes better using these tools, then even for the consumer, now you're consuming better-quality [products]."
Krishna also predicts that AI will become significantly more energy-efficient, citing emerging techniques from companies like Chinese AI startup DeepSeek. He envisions a future where AI consumes "less than one percent of the energy it's using today," making it more accessible and cost-effective.
However, Krishna remains skeptical about AI's potential to drive groundbreaking scientific discoveries or generate entirely new knowledge. Instead, he argues that quantum computing – a field in which IBM is heavily invested – will be the key to advancing scientific understanding. "AI is learning from already-produced knowledge, literature, graphics, and so on," Krishna explained. "It is not trying to figure out what is going to come next."
His stance contrasts sharply with that of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who has suggested that "superintelligent" AI could emerge in the near future and play a crucial role in accelerating innovation.