I recently started learning artificial intelligence, and throughout the journey, I wrestled with a big question: Will AI eventually make software engineers obsolete?
The question hit home — it's the profession that puts food on my table. With tools like v0.dev building slick user interfaces from plain text prompts, and lovable.dev spinning up entire product MVPs in hours, it's easy to feel like I am watching my profession evolve without me. AI is scaling at a breathtaking pace, especially when it comes to logic-driven, rule-based tasks.
But the more I learned, the more one truth stood out: AI can only win when the rules are already known. And life, most of the time, isn't like chess.
Where AI Shines: Rules, Logic, and System 2 Thinking
AI has already proven it can outplay us at games like chess, Go, and poker — games that rely on clear rules and measurable outcomes. These are classic examples of what psychologists call System 2 thinking: slow, deliberate reasoning based on logic and data.
And it's not just games. Many of the day-to-day tasks in software engineering — like refactoring code, generating UI components, or scaffolding basic applications — fall into this same pattern. There are rules. There are constraints. There's a goal.
If the problem space is tight and the inputs are clear, AI performs exceptionally well. In fact, it's often better than us.
But What About When There Aren’t Any Rules?
Now let's shift to the real world — the messy, unpredictable one where rules are fuzzy or don't exist at all. This is where humans thrive.
Imagine trying to define the rules for:
- Designing a product no one has imagined yet.
- Resolving a conflict between teams with different goals.
- Deciding what ethical responsibility means for a company deploying AI in healthcare.
These aren't games. There's no single way to "win." There are competing interests, social norms, evolving cultures, and hidden constraints. There are emotions, intuition, and uncertainty.
This is where human reasoning shows its depth. We handle ambiguity better because we've lived it. Our intuition — shaped by experience, culture, and emotion — isn't a weakness. It's a superpower.
Intuition, Creativity, and the Undefined Frontier
AI can suggest a hundred ways to design a button, but it can't feel whether the design is beautiful — or whether it sparks joy.
AI can summarize a thousand research papers, but it can't ask a question no one has thought to ask yet.
AI can simulate empathy with carefully chosen words, but it doesn't know what it means to be someone, to suffer, to struggle, to hope.
Scientific and philosophical breakthroughs rarely emerge from linear thinking.
They often come from leaps of intuition — those strange, sudden moments of insight that come from a place beyond logic.
Einstein imagined riding on a beam of light. Newton watched an apple fall. These weren't just data points — they were metaphors. Felt experiences. Human experiences.
So What Should Software Engineers Do?
First, let's acknowledge reality: AI will automate parts of our job.
That's not a threat — it's a shift.
But instead of racing AI at the things it does best, we should lean into the things it can't do well — yet maybe never will:
- Navigating ambiguity
- Asking better questions
- Bringing ethical perspective and human empathy into tech decisions
- Making creative leaps that don't follow any obvious pattern
We must become not just code writers, but problem framers, ethical designers, and human-centered engineers.
AI Needs Rules. Humans Make Them.
Here's the bottom line: AI needs rules to operate. It needs clear objectives and structured environments.
But humans? We make the rules. We challenge them. We break them when necessary.
That's how we built every scientific theory, every art form, every movement for justice.
AI can go fast — but only where the path is already paved. Humans blaze new trails. And in a world that's constantly changing, that matters more than ever.
So software engineers, take note: AI can rule where the rules are fixed. But in the wild, messy world beyond the code — where purpose, meaning, and innovation live — humans still lead.
