How Should Developers Respond to AI? Is There a Need to Establish Guidelines and Standards
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Currently, AI technology is in a phase of vigorous development. From a long-term perspective, it's worth considering whether industry guidelines and standards should be established to address potential security risks in the future. The author of this article initiates a brief discussion from the blog community!
Last month, the tech podcast Changelog released a special edition focusing on how developers should respond to the advent of AI. Jerod Santo, producer of the "Practical AI" podcast, moderated a panel discussion on "The Impact of AI on Developers" at the "All Things Open" conference. During the discussion, panelists raised questions about whether certain issues brought by AI require collective responses from the broader developer community...
The panelists discussing the impact of AI on developers included:
- Emily Freeman: Head of Community Engagement at Amazon Web Services (previously worked in developer relations at Microsoft), author of DevOps for Dummies: 97 Things Every Cloud Engineer Should Know.
James Quick: Developer/Content Creator.
James Quick acknowledged the high-profile strikes in other industries, stating: "The power of community, where people can unite and fight together for what they deserve. I don't know if we're in that position yet, but I think this serves as an example of what people can achieve when united under a common goal for the entire industry."
He also mentioned, "Perhaps in the future we'll reach a stage of collective resistance against AI. I don't know if such a scenario will truly emerge. But I believe gathering these forces could have a positive impact in determining our ultimate direction."
As the discussion shifted to other areas, we realized the issue isn't just about the arrival of powerful, code-writing AI. The real question is how the developer community will respond to code licensing and establish responsible guidelines for AI development companies, among other issues. Beyond adapting to new technologies to protect their careers, developers can also help create tools to address their pain points. They can find fulfillment by solving increasingly complex problems while also helping others.
However, to adapt to the arrival of artificial intelligence, developers first need to figure out whether they need to take collective action.
James Quick stated that "uniting against AI" is not a specific goal. He previously mentioned that this was just an example to demonstrate the impact a united community could have. James Quick referenced the situation during the United Auto Workers strike. "Because people united to fight for wages, benefits, and more, we saw significant changes. I can only speculate that similar changes might occur in AI-related fields, but perhaps in the future, people will need to unite to push for reforms in regulations, laws, restrictions, and other areas."
However, at this stage, it remains just a concept without any actionable steps. James Quick emphasized, "Honestly, I don’t have any more concrete actions or goals at the moment. Right now, we can only speculate." But he believes community action will be necessary to drive reforms, particularly regarding the question of "who owns the code." This is a highly debated issue, as AI can extract code from public repositories, and James Quick worries that developers might be forced to abandon open-source licenses.
He acknowledges that we face even bigger challenges, and these are daunting. At the same time, he believes progress is needed in many areas: "Legal, moral, ethical—all these aspects require advancements in open source. Many areas need progress to provide guidance for our current work." James Quick thinks this will follow the trajectory of other human advancements, including "recognizing that at some point, we do need to set limits." He added, "What that means and what it looks like, I don’t know."
When discussing specific details, Jerod Santo pointed out that there are several methods to prevent certain AI agents from crawling various sites, one of which is updating the robots.txt file. James Quick suggested a similar approach to mark GitHub repositories as a "reasonable intermediate step," though he later admitted it would be difficult to prove where AI-generated code sourced its training data.
However, Emily Freeman highlighted the role of the community in dealing with "profit-driven" companies. "To some extent, we must tell the market through our efforts and consumption choices that this is unacceptable."
"I don’t want to live in a world where we constantly try to evade web crawlers. I want to live in a world where standards and guidelines define the responsibilities for using such information, so we can collectively discuss how to advance this aspect of work."
Emily Freeman once mentioned choosing battles wisely, stating, "Make demands where possible." So, what does she consider an essential area? Advocating for responsible AI development, which also means establishing guidelines and standards. "Our current position precisely demands that we push for this while opposing market forces that prioritize rapid profit-driven approaches."
This was a theme she repeatedly emphasized throughout the panel discussion, stressing the importance of developers "recognizing the power and influence we have in promoting responsible AI development."
The panel continued to discuss the needs of the community. Emily Freeman agreed with James Quick that AI's impact on developers includes tools designed to alleviate their least favorite tasks, such as debugging odd code, though it will take some time to achieve. "But I believe ownership and responsibility still lie with us. And we can decide how these tools are used."
The biggest surprise came from Jerod Santo's question, asking whether the long-term impact of AI on developers is "pessimistic" or "optimistic." He personally believes it is "positive in the long run," and the other two shared the same view.
James Quick said he considers it "a very positive thing," aiming to ease concerns about jobs being replaced by AI. Emily Freeman also smiled and expressed her optimism about AI, "In my view, we must accept and face what is happening now rather than trying to fight against it."
What is Emily Freeman's advice for developers? Learn as much as possible, study design prompts or understand the models you're using, "recognize strengths and limitations, and be prepared to make adjustments and changes as we progress..." Like developers of the past, we must keep up with the development of new technologies.
The good news is that Emily Freeman believes with venture capitalists investing in AI, "a large number" of new AI tools will be created.
Towards the end, Jerod Santo raised a thought-provoking question: Programmers are very detail-oriented and meticulous, will AI "steal some of our joy?" Emily Freeman responded: "I think you're absolutely right." Perhaps we humans take pride in our ability to quickly spot errors, and "this pattern recognition makes us truly powerful."
But Emily Freeman also acknowledged: "I think for some people this is joy, while others don't see it that way." She described her own joy as "building tools that are meaningful to people... I think for each of us, joy comes in different forms." But joy and personal growth are important to humans, and will continue to be so in the future.
This brings us back to the broader theme of controlling how AI enters the developer world. "We will set the corresponding standards. We can't just wait for the results, but actively participate in co-creating, or create them ourselves." Emily Freeman hopes developers will "take ownership" by identifying areas we want to delegate to AI and those we want developers to retain, growing alongside new tools.
Emily Freeman states: "Compared to writing CREATE/READ/UPDATE/DELETE services a thousand times, I'd rather solve truly complex problems. The challenge of solving new problems at scale is interesting." She believes that "it's precisely this problem-solving ability, the higher-level overview, and holistic perspective that will empower us moving forward."
Finally, when we asked James Quick if he received any feedback about the panel discussion, he replied: "The overwhelming response we received was 'this is an issue we should all be paying attention to.'"