Suffolk expert says AI will replace human coders in 10 years

Mr Applegate works with young people across Suffolk to engage in technology-based activities

A Suffolk computer expert is predicting that artificial intelligence (AI) will replace human coders in 10 years' time.

Creative Computing Club founder Matthew Applegate said: "I'm teaching the last generation of coders. We are looking at being knocked out by AI very soon."

Mr Applegate started the club in 2012 with the ethos "50% work 50% play".

"AI will creep into everything; pop music, writing... plumbers are safe! Technology is always an interesting ride," he said.

His prediction comes as a House of Lords committee says that we should embrace the positives of AI rather than just focus on the risks.

The Communications and Digital Committee's report looked at large language models (LLMs), which are what power generative AI tools like ChatGPT.

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Matthew Applegate also produces chiptune music as Pixelh8

Mr Applegate said: "They trained AI on a thing called GitHub, which is an online repository of all the best examples of code, and some of the worst. So it was able to determine the best practices very early on.

"So we've bypassed a lot of those problems very quickly. We've got probably about ten more years of teaching code."