Concerns over the negative impact of GenAI on software developers are misplaced, according to new research from software development marketplace Deazy.

Despite the rapid advancement of GenAI technologies, such as OpenAI's GPT-4 and Anthropic's Claude, which have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in code generation, bug fixing, and creative problem-solving, most developers remain confident in their job security.

Two-thirds of developers believe the chances of them being replaced entirely by GenAI are either unlikely i.e. 34 per cent, very unlikely i.e. 24 per cent or non-existent i.e. 7 per cent. Creativity, intuition and interpretation – reading between the lines – were cited as the most important human qualities that GenAI cannot replicate.

The research raised concerns about the quality of the work completed using GenAI. 52 per cent of developers said that compared to one year ago, up to 20 per cent of their day-to-day duties could be carried out by GenAI. This figure dropped to 40 per cent, however, when asked if GenAI could do those duties to the same standard they could.

Despite these concerns, more than half of respondents are excited about GenAI's potential impact on developers. At the same time, the research also found that clients are mostly reasonable regarding the expectations of GenAI. Just 29 per cent of developers said there were client expectations that development costs and timescales should now decrease because GenAI can now do some work. 89 per cent of developers said they felt Software Development Lifecycles would evolve with the introduction of GenAI.

Prakalp Varshney, software developer at Aspire, says that AI will not take away jobs but those who do not know how to use Artificial Intelligence will lose their jobs. "On the other hand, recently, at Cognition Labs, the team of developers engaged in developing 'Devin AI', an autonomous artificial intelligence assistive device, was removed and completely replaced with AI. But, now developers are being hired there again," he adds.

“GenAI is about making developers’ lives easier, not replacing them entirely,” said Andy Peddar, CEO of Deazy. “GenAI in development will be more about supporting people,” adds Peddar. “But it will fundamentally change how engineers and developers work. It's easy to see how they could use GenAI to do version one of what they are trying to achieve and then improve and refine it. It's a time saver and will power them to deliver better work," he concludes.