Most outsourced coders in India will go in 2 years

Most outsourced programmers in India will see their jobs wiped out in the next year or two, Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque said.

Mostaque, on a call with UBS analysts, said that most of the country’s outsourced coders will lose their jobs as the effects of AI mean that it is now possible for software to be developed with far fewer people.

“I think that it affects different types of jobs in different ways,” Mostaque said on a call with analysts at the Swiss investment bank last week.

“If you’re doing a job in front of a computer, and no one ever sees you, then it’s massively impactful, because these models are like really talented grads.”

According to Mostaque, not everyone will be affected in the same way, however.

That is due in no small part to differing rules and regulations around the world. Countries with stronger labor laws, like France, will be less likely to see such an impact, for example.

In India, Mostaque said, “outsourced coders up to level three programmers will be gone in the next year or two, whereas in France, you’ll never fire a developer.”

“So it affects different models in different countries in different ways in different sectors.”

India is home to more than 5 million software programmers, who are most under threat from the impacts of advanced AI tools like ChatGPT, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Asia’s second-largest country is a prime location for companies that outsource back-office jobs and other roles overseas. Silicon Valley tech giants, Wall Street banks, airlines and retailers are all customers to India’s outsourcing firms.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), an Indian multinational IT services and consulting firm, is the country’s largest outsourcing provider. Others include Infosys and Wipro.

TCS has bet big on generative AI, committing to train more than 25,000 engineers on the technology over Microsoft’s Azure Open AI service to “help clients accelerate their adoption of this powerful new technology.”

In an interview with CNBC Thursday, TCS’s CEO N. Ganapathy Subramaniam said that the company began taking a “machine-first” approach to project delivery about four years ago and it showed how AI will make an “enormous impact on the way that we operate and the way that we do things.”

Generative AI, Subramaniam said, “has just advanced it by a few years.”

Mostaque reiterated a previous statement he made saying that there will be “no more programmers” in five years’ time — however, he caveated this to say that he meant coders in the traditional sense.

“Why would you have to write code where the computer can write code better? When you deconstruct the programming thing from bug testing to unit testing to ideation, an AI can do that, just better,” Mostaque said.

“But it won’t be doing it automatically, it will be AI ‘co-pilots,'” Mostaque said. “That means less people are needed for classical programming, but then are they needed for other things? This is the question and this is the balance that we have to understand, because different areas are also affected differently.”

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