Artificial intelligence–powered tools like ChatGPT and Gemini are improving rapidly, and companies are now developing new agentic tools that could potentially replace humans in certain roles. The trend began earlier this year when OpenAI launched a Deep Research agent, which it claimed could replace entry-level research assistants. This was followed by OpenAI’s Codex software engineering agent, and later, Google unveiled its own coding agent, Jules, at I/O 2025.
Despite the arrival of these coding agents and a stark warning from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei that 50% of all white-collar entry-level jobs could be eliminated within the next one to five years, Google CEO Sundar Pichai remains optimistic.
Sundar Pichai on AI replacing software engineers:
During a recent podcast with Lex Fridman, Pichai said that while 30% of all code written at Google now uses AI help, the new technology is freeeing up humans do more and Google plans to hire more software engineers in the near to mid term.
“I think a few things. Looking at Google, we’ve given various stats around 30% of code now uses AI-generated solutions or whatever it is. But the most important metric, and we carefully measure this, how much has our engineering velocity increased as a company due to AI. And it’s tough to measure, and we rigorously try to measure it. And our estimates are that number is now at 10%.” Pichai told the podcaster.
“Now, across the company, we’ve accomplished a 10% engineering velocity increase using AI. But we plan to hire more engineers next year. Because the opportunity space of what we can do is expanding too. And so, I think hopefully, at least in the near to mid-term, for many engineers, it frees up more and more of the, even in engineering and coding, there are aspects which are so much fun. You’re designing, you’re architecting, you’re solving a problem. There’s a lot of grunt work, which all goes hand in hand.” the Alphabet CEO added.
“But it hopefully takes a lot of that away, makes it even more fun to code, frees you up more time to create, problem-solve, brainstorm with your fellow colleagues, and so on. So, that’s the opportunity there. And second, I think it’ll attract, it’ll put the creative power in more people’s hands, which means people create more, that means there’ll be more engineers doing more things.” Pichai further noted.
