With the arrival of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the world couldn’t get enough of it. People started asking the chatbot questions, making it write high school papers, or pushing its ethical and philosophical limits to the edge. Along with this masterful invention, many have started talking about countless jobs and industries becoming obsolete, or, at least being forced to adapt so that functions can complement the AI-powered tool.
In March 2023, a study issued by OpenAI with the University of Pennsylvania indicated that 49% of workers could have half or more of their tasks exposed to Large Language Models (LLMs).
Some of the findings from the study point to the fact that, surprisingly, it is not blue-collar working jobs or those involving manual and/or human-centered labor, like mechanics and drivers, which will disappear or become obsolete first, but rather more white-collar jobs are in danger than one would have expected: some of the occupations with the highest (100%) exposure to LLMs include mathematicians, financial analysts, and journalists, while translators are estimated only to be affected 76%, to many people’s surprise.
For nearshore software development outsourcing, LLMs are an opportunity, not a worry
And, while some industries will be more affected than others by the emergence of ChatGPT and other AI-powered chatbots, what changes should we expect within the software development outsourcing industry?
“Software developers need to adapt to these upcoming changes and learn how to use AI to their benefit and become more productive while doing it. Those working in software development outsourcing will need to learn how to use it because it will become just like the smartphone today: if you don’t know how to use it, you’re out”, says Mihai Cvasnievschi, CTO of Odeen.
LLMs, like ChatGPT, can not only simplify the understanding and use of complex code for nearshore software development outsourcing companies by way of generating natural language explanations of the code, but they can also describe how the various parts of the code can interact with each other, to carry out a specific task and break complicated code into simpler ones.
“Software developers’ jobs will by no means disappear. They will not only be able to write code faster, making sure that the chatbot has written the correct code and overseeing the code language where necessary but all this time that is won back from hours spent on writing code could be leveraged on activities that can bring more added value to the success of the company or the product. This is not only about cost reductions, but developers can direct their time toward more business and strategy-related responsibilities”, Cvasnievschi, Odeen’s CT continues.
Odeen is a forward-thinking company when it comes to the future of tech and what may lie ahead in this new age of AI. In this dynamic and constantly diverse climate, being open and adapting to the developments that may arise, to unburden employees from time- and cost-consuming tasks is not a lazy, but rather an innovative endeavor. At Odeen, we encourage software developers to be inventive with their use of LLMs when it comes to writing code and we offer employees the possibility to enhance their time and functionality, by using Ai tools, such as Copilot.
PS: We not only encourage colleagues from nearshore custom software development to use AI tools but all the pictures we use for our blog articles have been AI-generated using Midjourney.