Naval on AI and Engineers

Just listened to the latest episode of Naval’s podcast about AI and found it really insightful.

The prediction that AI will lead to software engineers being replaced — presumably, by product managers, designers, or anyone able to articulate creative thoughts to an LLM — has been around for a while, and as models get better, the prediction only seems to get more popular.

Naval predicts otherwise. Software engineers will be able to use AI to increase their productivity and will be able to leverage the tooling around it like no one else. They’ll run circles around anyone that doesn’t know how to code or never maintained a complex application for the long term. That will get reflected in the quality of the end product. Naval has a great line on that: “there’s no demand for average”. The best apps will win over all the vibe-coded alternatives.

And then he goes even further. Not only will software engineers not get replaced, they will be the ones doing the replacement. AI as a lever can increase their productivity by so much that they’ll be able to go after even more industries.

I think Naval is right. But while this view is optimistic for the future of engineers in the industry, it also makes it very clear how important it is to turn AI into a productivity multiplier. Engineers that are skeptical of AI will have no edge over everyone else using the ever improving models.