I’ve never seen a hype cycle like this one. Huge sound bites about AI — specifically, generative AI. Depending on who you ask, AI is either a helpful copilot or it’s gunning for your entire dev team’s jobs. As usual the truth is probably somewhere in between. But with so many CEOs talking up how much code AI is generating, it’s worth stepping back to ask: are they predicting the future, or selling it?
AI Will Write the Code — All of It?
We’ll start with Sam Altman, the OpenAI chief behind GPT-4, GPT-5, and maybe your last manually typed tech strategy deck. Earlier this year, he dropped this teaser:
“Programming at the beginning of 2025 and at the end of 2025 will be very different.” (Altman, 2025)
Now, Altman tends to be cautiously optimistic in public, so when he drops a vague-but-weighty line like this, it’s usually code for “you might want to rethink your tooling.”
Then there’s Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic:
“In three to six months, AI is writing 90 percent of the code. And then in twelve months, we may be in a world where AI is writing essentially all of the code.” (Amodei, 2025)
That’s not even a roadmap—that’s a countdown. He said it in March and the clock is ticking.
At Microsoft, Satya Nadella recently said:
“I’d say maybe 20%, 30% of the code that is inside of our repos today and some of our projects are probably all written by software.” (Nadella, 2025)
Not hypotheticals. Not future tense. “Is.” As in: this is already happening at Microsoft. But if you look at it carefully, Nadella chooses his words deliberately. He doesn’t mention AI, or whether the code is production-ready. Makes you wonder what kind of productivity gains (or testing overhead) they’re seeing internally. I’d like to know more.
Thomas Dohmke (CEO, GitHub), whose product is AI-generated code, says:
“Sooner than later, 80% of the code is going to be written by Copilot. And that doesn’t mean the developer is going to be replaced.” (Dohmke, 2023)
That was a couple of years ago — and luckily for him, he didn’t put a deadline on it. And he has a useful caveat there at the end. These tools aren’t (yet) replacing engineers, but they are redefining what engineers do.
And here’s Mark Zuckerberg:
“Probably in 2025, we at Meta… are going to have an AI that can effectively be a sort of midlevel engineer that you have at your company that can write code.” (Zuckerberg, 2025)
That is a different take on it: an AI equivalent of a mid-level developer. If true that will have a massive impact on the profile of our tech teams. Who’s going to be left? What skills will they need? And what are they supposed to do?
Programming is Dead. Long Live Programming.
Now to NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, who’s gone full messiah mode:
“Everyone is a programmer now – you just have to say something to the computer.” (Huang, 2023)
And:
“It is our job to create computing technology such that nobody has to program. And that the programming language is human.” (Huang, 2024)
Speak your intention, get working software. Magic. It’s a nice story — but in my experience, the main challenge in software development is not the coding but articulating the requirements. So I’m a little bit sceptical. And anyone who’s dealt with AI outputs knows it’s not quite that simple. These models are great at sounding right — even when they have got it totally wrong.
Musk, as Always, Takes It Further
Elon Musk rarely misses a chance to make headlines:
“AI will write anything from the majority to all code within 5 years. Soon after, it will eliminate the need for code entirely.” (Musk, 2023)
This isn’t just “AI as your coding assistant.” It’s the death of code. And in his conversation with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Musk went even broader:
“There will come a point where no job is needed… You can have a job if you want a job or personal satisfaction, but the AI will be able to do everything.” (Musk, 2023)
So if you’re feeling anxious about your current delivery roadmap — good news: AI will just do it for you while you sip a dairy-free flat white. Apparently that’s the future. I’ll take it with a generous pinch of salt.
The More Measured Voices
Not everyone is drinking the Kool-AI-d.
Andrew Ng, one of the most respected voices in machine learning, had this to say:
“As coding becomes easier, more people should code, not fewer!” (Ng, 2025)
His argument? Making code easier to write with AI will actually bring more people into the profession, not eliminate it. We’re starting to see that with Vibe Coding — more people experimenting with code thanks to AI tools. Although we’re also seeing the limitations of Vibe Coding when used by the inexperienced.
And tech investor Marc Andreessen goes fully utopian:
“AI is quite possibly the most important — and best — thing our civilization has ever created… ushering in a new era of heightened material prosperity across the planet.” (Andreessen, 2023)
Let’s hope.
Right — enough quotes, here’s where I land on all of this.
Conclusion: Is It All Just Shareholder Hype?
This is the wildest hype cycle we’ve seen yet — which is saying something – and looking at all that, I can’t help being a bit sceptical. These CEOs aren’t just chatting to their mates. They’re selling. Every one of them has a vested interest in pushing the idea that AI is not only inevitable, but already delivering results. Higher efficiency. Lower costs. Fewer people needed. More margin. That’s Wall Street catnip.
Try AI for yourself. Actually, your delivery teams already are. I think they’ll tell you reality is lagging behind the hype. AI’s impact on software development is real. But it’s uneven. Messy. And still full of sharp edges.
Some of these predictions will age well. Others — probably not. Will 90% of code be AI-generated in 2025? I doubt it. Will your team benefit from smarter tooling, faster iteration, and less boilerplate? Absolutely.
Don’t bet the farm, but don’t sit on your hands either. Evaluate the tools, skill up your teams, and stay grounded.
Going forward, I think I’ll listen more closely to the more grounded of the big Tech CEOs: Sam Altman and Satya Nadella.
We’ll come back to this list of quotes in 12 months. Let’s see who really saw the future — and who just needed a better Q2 forecast.
References
Altman, S. (2025, February 7). Remarks at TU Berlin Tech Panel. As quoted in Modi, P. (2025). The future of programming will not be same – Sam Altman. EducationNext. https://www.educationnext.in/posts/programming-at-the-beginning-of-2025-and-at-the-end-of-2025-will-be-very-different
Amodei, D. (2025, March 10). CEO Speaker Series: The Future of U.S. AI Leadership [Transcript]. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org/event/ceo-speaker-series-dario-amodei-anthropic
Andreessen, M. (2023, June 6). Why AI will save the world [Essay]. Andreessen Horowitz Future. https://a16z.com/ai-will-save-the-world/
Blanchard, B. (2023, May 29). AI means everyone can now be a programmer, Nvidia chief says. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/technology/ai-means-everyone-can-now-be-programmer-nvidia-chief-says-2023-05-29/
Dohmke, T. (2023, June 17). Interview by I. Scheffler. In GitHub CEO says Copilot will write 80% of code “sooner than later”. Freethink. https://www.freethink.com/robots-ai/github-copilot
Huang, J. (2024, February 24). Remarks at the World Government Summit in Dubai. In Tyson, M. (2024, February 25). Jensen Huang says kids shouldn’t learn to code. Tom’s Hardware. https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/jensen-huang-advises-against-learning-to-code-leave-it-up-to-ai
Musk, E. (2023). As quoted in Quora thread, Musk claims vertical AI Agents will automate web and app development within 5 years. Quora. https://www.quora.com/Musk-claims-vertical-AI-Agents-will-automate-web-and-app-development-within-5-years-Will-this-cause-widespread-developer-unemployment-Dies-this-mean-that-their-will-be-no-demand-of-web-and-app-developers-anymore
Musk, E. (2023, November 2). Remarks at UK AI Safety Summit with Rishi Sunak. In Thakur, A. (2023, November 8). “AI will replace need for all jobs and create universal high income”: Elon Musk. NDTV. https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/elon-musk-says-ai-will-replace-need-for-all-jobs-and-create-universal-high-income-4557207
Nadella, S. (2025, April 29). Remarks at LlamaCon fireside chat with Mark Zuckerberg. In Zeff, M. (2025, April 29). Microsoft CEO says up to 30% of the company’s code was written by AI. TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/29/microsoft-ceo-says-up-to-30-of-the-companys-code-was-written-by-ai/
Ng, A. (2025, March 13). “As coding becomes easier, more people should code, not fewer!” [X post]. X. https://x.com/AndrewYNg/status/1900219116822102116/
Varanasi, L. (2025, January 11). Mark Zuckerberg says AI could soon do the work of Meta’s midlevel engineers. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-meta-ai-replace-engineers-coders-joe-rogan-podcast-2025-1
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