CEO of IBM, Arvind Krishna believes that humans will not be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI). During an onstage interview at South by Southwest (SXSW) conference on Tuesday, while speaking on a range of topics, Krishna spoke about AI and he disagreed with a recent prediction from Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, that 90% of code may be written by AI in the next three to six months.
“I think the number is going to be more like 20-30% of the code could get written by AI — not 90%,” Krishna said. “Are there some really simple use cases? Yes, but there’s an equally complicated number of ones where it’s going to be zero.”
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While AI tools can assist in writing, debugging, and optimizing code, making developers more efficient, the question always goes back to will they be able to replace human intelligence completely?
Krishna also discussed the future of quantum computing, expressing optimism about its imminent advancements. He anticipated that within the next four years, quantum computing would deliver significant breakthroughs, potentially revolutionizing various industries.
The IBM CEO emphasized that, unlike AI, which learns from existing data, quantum computing operates at a subatomic level, allowing it to solve complex problems beyond the capabilities of traditional computers. He highlighted the complementary nature of AI and quantum computing, suggesting that their integration could lead to unprecedented technological advancements.
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Though AI has been evolving over the years, it seems Krishna still believes in human skill over AI. He also spoke about global trade during the session.
“We want people to come here [the United States] and bring their talent with them and apply that talent,” Krishna said. “And we want to develop our own talent as well, but you can’t develop it as well if you’re not bringing the best people from across the world for our people to learn from too. So we should be an international talent hub, and we should have policies that go along with that.” He added.