In spite of the huge advances made by artificial intelligence over the past few years, human developers and workers will always have a key role to play, SAP has declared.
At its SAP TechEd 2023 conference in Bangalore, AI was perhaps unsurprisingly at the front of mind for the software giant, which unveiled a raft of new AI tools and services to work alongside its recently-announced Joule copilot.
However, several SAP key executives were keen to stress that despite these steps forward, there will always be a place for human workers in the development process.
Developers for ever
“Certainly not,” said Juergen Mueller, SAP CTO, when asked if AI will make developer jobs disappear, “but like many other technologies, there will be changes.”
“What is going to happen is that roles will change, he stated. “I like to use the example of a calculator, this used to be a human job...but now I have my phone, and of course it has the more sophisticated technology on it...but that doesn't mean that we don't need to understand math anymore, and we don't need to pay for developers.”
“(AI growth) will mean a lot of (human) activities will shift towards being more of a reviewer, and correcting things, and building and focusing on the most important topic that differentiates companies and customers.”
Also announced at TechEd was SAP Build Code, a new “pro-code” service, and one that looks to help developers of all skill levels learn generative AI skills faster than ever.
Speaking at a press conference at the event, JG Chirapurath, chief marketing and solutions office for SAP BTP, said he believed this new offering would speed up the entire development process to improve productivity.
“When you look at SAP Build Code, you will see it's built to augment developers,” he observed, noting that the platform would often remove the boring or repetitive tasks required by developers.
“But as always in these technologies, actually we will see more development happen,” Mueller added, “as digitization is everywhere, and all companies will become AI companies, so therefore the demand is almost unlimited of good development capacity.”
