Thursday, 21 December 2023

End of Conventional Programming? Are we heading towards this in 2 / 5/ 10 Years? Read this!

Dear Friends

Caution: I am writing this article in the context of Public Awareness and Futuristic Opportunities. All views are personal.

This morning I received a Video of Dr Matt Welsh, Co-founder of Fixie.ai, a Seattle-based startup developing a new computational platform with AI at the core, Ex-Apple, Xnor.ai, Google, and a Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University, PhD from UC Berkeley.

This has been forwarded by my former colleague & friend (Mr. Jerry Kurian) at Quidnunc Development Centre, and currently, Founder @ "GenAI People" - Mentoring Program.

I watched the 1:06:55 hr video (Large Language Models and The End of Programming - CS50 Tech Talk) in a single go! 

(www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhCl-GeT4jw).

Let’s talk about Numbers first!!

Based on the US Salary, the 1-day cost for a regular experienced software developer including all insurance/perks/total cost to the company is $1200. Assume on average, the number of lines of code checked into the system (final tested and useful) is 100 per day per developer.

Average number of GPT-3 tokens per line is 10. The price for GPT-3 is $0.02/1000 Tokens. Hence total cost per developer per day by GPT is $0.12 against the developer cost per day is $1200.

If we take Indian cost, assume the Total cost to the company per developer is Rs 30,00,000. Per day cost is Rs 8300!! Whereas GPT equivalent cost is less than Rs 10!

Why does an entrepreneur hire more developers when technology brings down the cost of conventional development barring project management, requirements specs, customer interaction, etc?

What are the additional roles companies would invest in?

1.    Project Manager who manages the team

2.    Product Manager who understands the domain/product

3. Test Designer cum Prompt Engineer who tests whether it works or not and also changes the code using alternative prompts if it fails in the test!!

What Qualifications are needed for the above roles?

-        Common Sense, Critical & Design Thinking, Domain Understanding

What happens to the existing Computer Science Course Structure in the colleges?

ü  I have a counter question for you. Are we really worried about how Low-level machine-level things work (processor/memory level) after the introduction of high-level programming languages esp. Python? Of course, it is useful for certain applications like OS/IoT, etc. I am talking in a large context. Down the line, the same thing might happen to Python. Python might become a Low-level language when LLM develops applications and English Prompt becomes a high-level language for us!

 

ü  If LLM does the entire computation, stores it in its Vector databases, capable of optimizing the algorithm, why should programmers worry about

o   Which Data Structure should be used?

o   How do we store and retrieve from DBMS using SQL query?

o   How do we deploy, where to deploy the code, how fast etc (DevOps)? It is the botheration of LLM but not the developers! It does it in seconds!!

o   In such a scenario, Do I need to learn Computer Networks/OS/Cloud Computing/Software Engineering? Will they become obsolete by that time?

 

ü  What happens to existing degree holders and future degree holders?

o   Perform with the Prompt, else, Perish with your Procrastination

o   Campus selection happens but based on your ideas, domain understanding, prompt crafting skills

o   There won’t be the Dept of CSE alone! CSE gets merged with every Department and Domain!!

 

ü  The role of non-CSE with an example?

o   Let us consider Civil Engineering

o Engineers might use natural language prompts to describe project requirements, and the LLM could generate initial design sketches or suggest improvements based on its vast knowledge of engineering principles.

o   Engineers could describe project specifications, and the LLM could produce code snippets for simulations, analysis, or modeling.

o   Detailed documentation and reports by LLM

o   Large Language Models might interface with Building Information Modelling software, allowing engineers to communicate with the system using natural language.

 

o Risk Analysis and Decision Support by LLM with Civil Engineering Capabilities. I am not joking!! Very soon it is possible!!

 

ü  You know, KissanAI unveiled Dhenu 1.0 LLM for India’s Agricultural context!! The model's uniqueness lies in its bilingual nature, processing 300,000 instruction sets in English, Hindi, and Hinglish.

 

ü  Krutrim, ‘India’s own AI' developed by Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal/Krishnamurthy Venugopala Tenneti-led venture (krutrim si  designs)- trained 2 trillion+ ‘tokens/ sub-words used in conversations and capable in 20 Indian languages. larger than even GPT-4 in Indic language support

 

ü  The day is not far. Have you seen Amazon’s fulfillment centers?  

 How do robotics, miles of conveyors, complex scanning & sortation equipment, advanced automation, and machine learning come together with the help of AWS to get packages to customers in as fast as one day for Prime members? Future Factories are built in this way!

 Are you Convinced? Regardless, I am!

Raise your Bar! Otherwise, Get Rinsed in this Wave!!

Dr.Ravi Saripalle

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