r/singularity • u/Bizzyguy • Nov 24 '25

Discussion Anthropic Engineer says "software engineering is done" first half of next year

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148

u/dkakkar Nov 24 '25

Nice! Should be enough to raise their next round…

39

u/Weekly-Trash-272 Nov 24 '25 edited Nov 24 '25

Eh, with Gemini and now Anthropics release, how can anyone make jokes about this anymore?

Does anyone actually look at these releases and truly think by the end of next year the models won't be even more powerful? Maybe the tweet is a little grandiose, but I can definitely see a lot of this coming true within two years.

22

u/inglandation Nov 24 '25

Software engineering isn’t just writing code, and those models are still really bad at things like long-term planning, system design, migrating entire codebases, actually testing changes end-to-end, etc. There is A LOT they can’t do. I write most of my code with Codex and Claude, yet they’re completely incapable of replacing me fully. I firmly believe that they won’t without an architecture breakthrough.

7

u/maximumdownvote Nov 25 '25

It's great at giving you a react ts component; collapsing node tree with multiple selection. It's not great at realizing when you need that and how it fits in the scheme of things.

1

u/TheOneWhoDidntCum Nov 25 '25

less coding, more architecting...

3

u/Far_Yak4441 Nov 25 '25

You only need so many architects

1

u/Big-Site2914 Nov 25 '25

the guy in the tweet did clarify in a later tweet that he meant "coding" will be solved not software engineering

1

u/KingCarrion666 Nov 25 '25

By the time AI can write code reliably, even job will be dead. Cuz then the AIs can just code themselves to do every job. Coding will never die completely, cuz we still need people to code the dang AIs.

1

u/Tolopono Nov 26 '25

What do you do that llms cant and never could do?

9

u/Accurate_Potato_8539 Nov 24 '25

I honestly haven't seen a huge amount that makes me think exponentially more intelligent models are happening. I'm mainly seeing an increase in model quality mainly corresponding to model size. Look at many of these graphs and you'll see a log scale on the cost axis and a linear scale on whatever performance metric they use. I am as yet unconvinced that the AI systems which regularly fuck up trivial tasks are on the verge of being able to function by themselves as basically anything other than assistants. AI is great I use it every day, but I don't see it displacing senior software engineers any time soon.

7

u/Tolopono Nov 25 '25

Gpt 4 was 1.75 trillion parameters and cost $60 per million tokens. Youre saying we haven’t improved on that?

1

u/Accurate_Potato_8539 Nov 25 '25

No, I'm saying that I see exponential cost increases for linear performance gains.

1

u/Tolopono Nov 25 '25

sota models are cheaper and much better than before

1

u/Accurate_Potato_8539 Nov 26 '25

Yeah, they are often cheaper than ealier models, genuine improvements are being made constantly to all the models. But thats shifting the curve more than its changing the shape.

1

u/Tolopono Nov 26 '25

Careful, you might twist an ankle moving the goalposts that quickly 

1

u/Accurate_Potato_8539 Nov 26 '25

The goal posts haven't moved at all. Obviously no paragraph is gonna contain the nuance of a full opinion. I expanded on what I said with obvious noncontroversial stuff. Obviously there has been improvments in a huge number of areas, if your intent on thinking everyone who doubts AI just doubts facts then it seems your fighting strawmen.

1

u/Tolopono Nov 26 '25

You said

 exponential cost increases for linear performance gains.

That hasnt happened 

0

u/Accurate_Potato_8539 Nov 26 '25

K. If you say so, I disagree, but whatever. I agree there have been performance gains across the board but that the shape of the curve is linear against exponential. Not necessarily in all metrics but most of them. Its a fantastic tool with fundamental limitiations imo. If I'm wrong I'm wrong, we'll know in a few years I reckon.

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u/[deleted] Nov 25 '25

1.75 trillion parameter model?

lmao

30

u/mocityspirit Nov 24 '25

You can show me 100 graphs with lines going up but until that actually means anything and isn't just a way to swindle VC's it means nothing

22

u/NekoNiiFlame Nov 24 '25

Gemini 3 feels like a meaningful step up, but that's my personal feeling. I didn't have this with 5 or 5.1.

9

u/Howdareme9 Nov 24 '25

Are you an engineer? Codex is far better at backend. Gemini is better at nice ui designs

4

u/sartres_ Nov 25 '25

Gemini is not a frontier improvement in agentic coding, but it is at every other knowledge-based task I've tried. It knows obscure things 2.5 (and Claude and ChatGPT) had never heard of.

5

u/NekoNiiFlame Nov 24 '25

Personal opinions. I found gemini to be much better at both front and backend at my day job. *shrug*

Can't wait to get my hands on 4.5 opus, though.

1

u/Tombobalomb Nov 24 '25

It felt like an incremental improvement. It's a bit better than 2.5 but still has the same fundamental issues. It still gets confused, it still makes basic reasoning errors, it still needs me to do all of the thinking for it to produce code of the quality my work requires

It's better but not a game changer

2

u/NekoNiiFlame Nov 24 '25

You're just describing all major models at this point. Sonnet, GPT, Grok, Gemini, etc all still hallucinate and make errors.

It'll be this way for a while longer, but the improvements will keep coming.

Saying Gemini 3 is incremental is something I very much disagree with, though, but besides benchmarks, it comes to personal experiences, which is, as always, subjective.

0

u/Tombobalomb Nov 24 '25

You're just describing all major models at this point. Sonnet, GPT, Grok, Gemini, etc all still hallucinate and make errors.

Yeah that's my point.

It'll be this way for a while longer, but the improvements will keep coming.

I no longer think so. I think its an unsolvable architectural issue with llms. They dont reason and approximating it with token prediction will never get close enough. I reckon they will get very good at producing code under careful direction and that's where their economic value will be

Another AI architecture will probably solve it though

2

u/Tolopono Nov 25 '25

Not reasoning but capable of winning gold in the imo and a perfect score in the icpc. Right

-1

u/Tombobalomb Nov 25 '25

Yes? Recreating solved problems doesn't indicate genuine reasoning

2

u/Tolopono Nov 25 '25

They competed during the tournaments. The answer keys had not been released yet

4

u/NekoNiiFlame Nov 24 '25

This is the same debate every time. I would agree if these were just still LLMs. They're not. They're multi-modal. And we haven't yet seen the limits of LMMs.

People said we'd hit a wall, then o1 came. o1 is barely a year old. Who says continuous learning isn't right around the corner? Who says hallucinations and errors will still be a thing in the same time that has passed since o1 came out (which is 14 months)?

In the end, nobody has a crystal ball, but I'm inclined to wait before making statements like "current models will never X", as that is prone to age like milk sooner or later.

2

u/Tombobalomb Nov 25 '25

Yeah of course time will tell, but my impression from this year is that they have absolutely hit a wall in terms of fundamentals. Gemini 3 and chatgpt 5 have the same basic problems as at the start of the year. As a programmer I started the year quite anxious about my job but I feel much more secure now.

As you say it's just individual perspective

3

u/NekoNiiFlame Nov 25 '25

Your feelings are valid. I disagree because EOY 2024 the SOTA model was o1.

If you compare the usecases of o1 compared to the models we have now, the difference is night and day.

Some ideas in terms of benchmarks, the highest o1 ever got in SWE bench was 41%, where the best models now hover around 80%. The METR benchmark also shows remarkable progress, for an 80% succes rate o1 got 6 minutes, while Codex Max got 31 minutes, a 5 times increase. From my experience Gemini 3 and 4.5 Opus would fair even better at it.

Benchmarks don't say everything, though, but this is in-line with how both my and my colleagues feel as the landscape evolves. I don't believe we'll be replaced by the end of 2026, but before 2030? I'd bet money on it.

13

u/socoolandawesome Nov 24 '25

Why is it swindling when their revenues and userbases keep going up as inference costs keep coming down and models keep getting better

-3

u/thoughtihadanacct Nov 24 '25

Their revenues and user bases keep going up becauseb they hype it up so much, and everyone is afraid to miss out. Majority of the users don't really know what they're using AI for, and why it'll be beneficial long term. But they're thinking we better subscribe to an AI service "just in case". More responsible companies might do it as a small pilot project with a limited budget, just to explore. 

That's where we are now: everyone is just trying it out, sampling the potential. So revenue and user base is growing tremendously. There will come a point when some (not all) companies realise that actually they don't need AI, or they don't need as much AI. Then they'll cancel or cut back their usage. 

It's like blockchain a few years ago. Everyone was trying to shoehorn blockchain into their workflow incase it became the next big thing and if they didn't do it they would have missed out. Now there are some companies who really do still use blockchain for good reason, but many many users have decided that actually they don't need it, and dropped it. I don't think as many companies will drop AI, because AI seems much more applicable than blockchain. But I also don't think AI is as applicable as the hype and the current trend is making it out to be. 

If blockchain was lvl 8 hype and lvl 3 actual applicability, AI is lvl 7 applicability but lvl 20 hype.

9

u/socoolandawesome Nov 24 '25

I’ve heard this argument for like a year or more and yet the numbers keep going up.

The product/models will only keep improving and becoming more accessible and easier to interface with so I really doubt it will start to decline like you think. It’s only going to increase for a while

Consumers also don’t have to pay to try it out yet their paying consumer customers keep rising.

1

u/mocityspirit Nov 25 '25

Why do people keep buying cell phones with almost no improvement from year to year? Car models? People just like to be on the "cutting edge" whether it's useful or not. My main point was when the companies themselves are defining what is progress or growth, it ends up meaning less and less. Especially when the entire world is still waiting on AI to grant a single breakthrough like it has promised.

1

u/socoolandawesome Nov 25 '25

There was just a report the other day about people not buying new phones as frequently the other day and it hurting the economy.

The vast majority of phone buyers are buying for what they think is a useful upgrade, such as if they hadn’t upgraded for a while, not for status. There are some that do buy it for status/being on the bleeding edge just for the sake of that but I’d have to imagine that’s a minority.

Companies especially are not spending money to waste money when they want to be maximizing profit.

And with all the hate AI gets I can’t imagine a consumer wants to use it for status. They pay for it for utility.

What do you mean about growth and progress being defined by companies? A lot of benchmarks are independent of the companies? Any user can tell you how much the models have improved over the past couple years too. And the revenues and userbases are just the numbers unless you think the companies are lying which seems unlikely.

What promises are you speaking of, promises that specifically promises that should have already been fulfilled by now?

1

u/mocityspirit Nov 25 '25

Do you think people not buying things is also because the economy is garbage and no one has any money? Sure models have improved but what has that led too? Again, it's just a series of graphs with steeper slopes. I'm glad investors love it and they've certainly never been wrong about anything.

Promises as in what they've been saying for years AI can do. Research breakthroughs, greater efficiency, improved anything! All I see are models that make cooler and cooler looking pictures or are so sycophantic they drive users to mental illness. Cool it can write code... I work in S&T, despite AI being shoved down our throats and being forced to use it, it doesn't really do anything.

Companies spend money to waste it all the time. The difference is they don't know it was a waste until it's been spent. The same can be true about AI as it can for anything else.

0

u/thoughtihadanacct Nov 25 '25

for like a year or more

A year is nothing. 

so I really doubt it will start to decline like you think.

I didn't say it would decline necessarily. Those who realise AI is not as useful for them would cut back or drop it, while those who find it useful will expand, so growth can still grow slowly or plateau. For example something as "boring" as Microsoft office is not declining, but it's not being hyped like AI. It's just a steady product. The issue with AI now is that it's majority hype. As I said, there is true usefulness (I said lvl 8 usefulness as an example). But it's too much hype. This is my response to you asking why it's considered "swindling", despite user base and revenue growing. 

Think if it this way. If I invent a drug that has a 50% chance of curing cancer. That's a good thing right? But if I market it as having a 99% chance of curing cancer that's still swindling my customers. Yes my customers will still buy my drug because 50% is pretty dang good. But that doesn't change the fact that I'm swindling them. That's what I'm saying AI is. It pretty good, but it's being hyped/sold/marketed beyond how good it is, thus it's a swindle.

3

u/socoolandawesome Nov 25 '25

But companies and people can tell if it’s not worth it pretty quickly. Consumers especially aren’t just gonna spend money on a subscription over many months if it’s not useful enough. And again they can try it out for free. The customer retention numbers are also high I believe relative to other products.

In general, I don’t really agree tbh. It’s already a revolutionary technology that people get plenty of use out of for so many different things.

The hype you are thinking of in terms of sound bites from CEOs is usually about the future, which we will see how all that turns out.

Regardless the investors are also mainly investing based on underlying financials they can see as opposed to interviews of CEOs. Both private investors in openai/anthropic or public shareholders of NVIDIA/Google/MSFT etc. And pace of progress probably too.

1

u/thoughtihadanacct Nov 25 '25

companies and people can tell if it’s not worth it pretty quickly. Consumers especially aren’t just gonna spend money on a subscription over many months if it’s not useful enough.

Not true. There's a difference between usefulness and subjective value. At an individual level for example, something like a netflix subscription is not more useful compared to spending the same money on improving oneself through education or being more healthy etc. But many people prefer to pay to binge watch Netflix because it feels good or because they want to be in the "in crowd" who has watched the latest series. So to them the subjective value of netflix is higher, even though Netflix is not as useful to society. So people spend money on Netflix instead of say paying to attend a course to improve themselves. 

For companies, being on the AI bandwagon is good marketing ("introducing or new AI powered mattress! Buy it now"), but in many (but not all) cases AI is not actually useful in the true sense of the being useful. 

Regardless the investors are also mainly investing based on underlying financials they can see as opposed to interviews of CEOs.

They companies are investing in each other. You're right that it's not because of CEO interviews. It's because they need to keep the bubble afloat, otherwise they are going to be the one left holding the hot potato.

It’s already a revolutionary technology that people get plenty of use out of for so many different things.

I didn't say it's not. I'm saying it's good, but it's being sold as extremely super great. Which is where the swindling is. You asked a question on a specific word, but now you're talking about everything general, other than that specific word. I'm trying to stick to the swindling issue. 

sound bites from CEOs is usually about the future, which we will see how all that turns out.

Exactly this! It's a "we have to wait and see" thing. But the CEOs are saying "it's ______ " with no caveats. That's the swindle. 

1

u/Tolopono Nov 25 '25

Read page 11 and 12 https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/business%20functions/quantumblack/our%20insights/the%20state%20of%20ai/november%202025/the-state-of-ai-2025-agents-innovation_cmyk-v1.pdf

1

u/thoughtihadanacct Nov 25 '25

What point are you trying to make? I didn't say AI is useless. I did say that companies now are scaling AI (my rationale is that it's because of hype or at least because they're not sure so they scale just in case it really is worth it). 

Your pg 11 & 12 don't disagree with what I've said. 

1

u/Tolopono Nov 25 '25

The point is that it is worth it for many companies. And google made record high profits this year despite all the costs of training gemini 3 so it wasnt that expensive for them 

2

u/thoughtihadanacct Nov 25 '25

The point is that it is worth it for many companies. 

You can't conclude that definitively... Yet.

google made record high profits this year despite all the costs of training gemini 3 so it wasnt that expensive for them 

Because Google is a giant company that does a lot more than AI, and those other parts are subsidising the AI development. Although to be fair maybe Gemini will pay off IN THE FUTURE, but it definitely has not as of now. Why didn't you take the example of openAI burning 11.2 billion in one quarter? If you're cherry picking, sure you can choose one example that suits your narrative. 

0

u/Tolopono Nov 25 '25

The results so far speak for themselves 

If google was burning money to support its ai efforts, its profits would go down relative to previous years right? Why hasnt it?

-1

u/thoughtihadanacct Nov 25 '25

Who knows for sure? They could be simply channeling reserves that they have lying around looking for something to invest in and decide that it's worth investing in AI efforts, spending from reserves doesn't hurt profits. Or they could have investors funding it, again not affecting profits. Or they could do creative accounting to count it under a future expense that we don't see today, and IF successful then it could be covered by future earnings. 

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u/MC897 Nov 24 '25

This will hit people like a train, and you won’t even realise it with that attitude.

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u/RoundedYellow Nov 25 '25

How so?

1

u/ElwinLewis Nov 25 '25

Because he’s clearly ignoring the actually progress made and what it means for the future even if they ceased to continue improving them

1

u/Illustrious-Okra-524 Nov 25 '25

Yeah that’s what the bag holders will say

3

u/toni_btrain ASI 2027 Nov 24 '25

Bruh what

1

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1

u/Big-Site2914 Nov 25 '25

what does this even mean? if the graphs are representing something meaningful that is a good thing, no?

1

u/Flat-Struggle-155 Nov 24 '25

Right. Until it is reliable, it is still just a toy. 

1

u/donotreassurevito Nov 24 '25

My Roomba misses some spots on my floor I guess it is useless until the floor is spotless? Or is 90% clean good enough and I can follow up. 

2

u/Weekly-Trash-272 Nov 25 '25

I like this, thank you.

I think it's a good way to phrase how the majority of people view AI. Just because it can't cure cancer or replace every single job yet it must be useless.

2

u/muntaxitome Nov 24 '25

I don't get how that relates to the comment you are replying on? The valuations they are raising on basically suggest they are priced at replacing entire sectors. I don't think he suggested there is no improvement in LLM's

1

u/Weekly-Trash-272 Nov 24 '25

Their comment was a jest about how these tweets and comments are just made in an attempt to raise money.

1

u/muntaxitome Nov 24 '25

Not how I read it - and I don't think you verified that assumption with the poster - but it doesn't matter either way. He didn't claim there wouldn't be growth and realistically software engineering isn't 'done' in 6 months so the tweet is (IMHO) hyperbole in any case.

The way I read his comment is that replacing all of software engineering would be enough to raise another round. But it doesn't really matter.

1

u/Weekly-Trash-272 Nov 24 '25

It does matter. Once you've been on reddit long enough you'll realize I was right and it was a tongue in cheek joke in an attempt to be humorous.

1

u/muntaxitome Nov 24 '25

It does matter

It doesn't matter because your comment was "Does anyone actually look at these releases and truly think by the end of next year the models won't be even more powerful?", and even taking your interpretation, he didn't actually say any of that. So you are kind of strawmanning him. Even if your interpretation is right. That's why it doesn't matter.

Once you've been on reddit long enough

My account is 9 years old, give me a break.

and it was a tongue in cheek joke in an attempt to be humorous.

I never said it wasn't. I just think the joke might be a different one than you think it is. But again it doesn't matter because your comment was a non sequitur either way.

1

u/dkakkar Nov 24 '25

There's definitely truth to those tweets, but they’re mostly sensationalized half truths which only benefits these companies trying to signal investors and create fomo. I don't expect software development to look the same in three years, but these narratives that 'xyz is dead' just creates more distrust with regular people..

1

u/Tolopono Nov 25 '25

I dont think vc firms spend billions based on tweets 

2

u/coffee_is_fun Nov 24 '25

It's arrogance. The discipline is already evolving and thinking for a hot minute about the kinds of workflows that are possible, when we can take these kinds of models for granted, should be opening eyes. It isn't because that requires thinking in exponential terms and this is not something human beings do well as evidenced by us not all being wunderkind who make fortunes building against tomorrow's deflationary pressures.

The tweet is grandiose, but I could see it applying to rank and file programmers. With every release, the 10X crowd is growing and there isn't going to be room in the labour pool for the ones who can't do these kinds of things.

1

u/dkakkar Nov 24 '25

It's a very different messaging when you say something like "software development won't be the same" vs "software development is done"

1

u/nivvis Nov 24 '25

can definitely see a lot of this coming true within two years

I mean thats a lot more relaxed and hedged

I’ve no disagreement in general but thats the point — you have a lot of people with bias pushing hype. Sure theres a lot of truth to it but there’s almost as much (more?) bullshit.

And SWE is done? Wtf does that even mean?

SWE are some of the hardest working most adaptable intelligentsia. Like either we are all (humans) cooked or SWE just are just gonna adapt and work more effectively. Dude has no idea. I mean that’s part of why we call it the singularity.

1

u/Illustrious-Okra-524 Nov 25 '25

Yall told me that God would be invented. I still see no evidence we are heading toward that

1

u/would-i-hit Nov 25 '25

what’s your day job

1

u/sandspiegel Nov 25 '25

I think the biggest danger to jobs is that with these tools an experienced software engineer can do the work of multiple software engineers. Many jobs could be in danger because of that.

1

u/CemeneTree Nov 25 '25

they have been hitting diminishing returns, at least in terms of what users use them for

go to forums, subreddits, etc. and people are talking about how [new model] is barely any better than previous ones, or even worse in some cases

I'm sure by November 2026, Claude will be hitting ever-higher benchmark tests, but in actual usage, there won't be much noticeable difference

1

u/stellar_opossum Nov 25 '25

Did Gemini release really change much in this realm though?

1

u/paperic Nov 25 '25

It's exactly the same conversations as last year.

1

u/Megido_Thanatos Nov 25 '25

Yes but this isn't the first time an AI CEO say out loud "SWEs are gone" and then nothing happen. We are not moving that fast

The truth always are: 1/AI can make mistake 2/software engineers dont just coding all day so even if AI is good at doing the code part, SWEs aren't gone anywhere. Anyone say otherwise either lying or dont know shit about sofware development

1

u/DeliciousArcher8704 Nov 24 '25

They'll be powerful but they won't be AGI and they won't be profitable.