Home Speakers Shawn Wang (swyx) Quote I think software engineering will spawn a new subdiscipline, specializing in applications of AI and wielding the emerging stack effectively, just as “ site reliability engineer ”, “ devops engineer ”, “ data engineer ” and “ analytics engineer ” emerged.
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More from Shawn Wang (swyx) Essay The Rise of the AI Engineer Jun 30, 2023
Foundation Models are “ few shot learners ”, exhibiting in-context learning and even zero shot transfer capabilities that generalize beyond the original intent of model trainers. In other words, the people creating the models don’t fully know what they are capable of. Essay The Rise of the AI Engineer Jun 30, 2023
In the near future, nobody will recommend starting in AI Engineering by reading Attention is All You Need, just like you do not start driving by reading the schematics for the Ford Model T. Essay The Rise of the AI Engineer Jun 30, 2023
There are 10x as many ML Engineer jobs as AI Engineer jobs on Indeed, but the higher growth rate of “AI” leads me to predict that this ratio will invert in 5 years. Essay The Rise of the AI Engineer Jun 30, 2023
We are observing a once in a generation “shift right” of applied AI, fueled by the emergent capabilities and open source/API availability of Foundation Models. A wide range of AI tasks that used to take 5 years and a research team to accomplish in 2013, now just require API docs and a spare afternoon in 2023.
On the same topics Blog Thinking in Systems, Shipping in Loops Sep 24, 2026
AI has removed the typing from software engineering & left the system design. Blog Thinking in Systems, Shipping in Loops Sep 24, 2026
The craft of fitting code together by hand is over; what remains is designing the loop that decides whether the output is right. Blog Thinking in Systems, Shipping in Loops Sep 24, 2026
This is the new software engineering: designing the systems that let AI write code correctly at scale. Blog Frontier Overhangs Sep 21, 2026
What this means is that model performance isn’t the only thing that matters: the integration between model and harness is where true agent differentiation is found. Blog The Overhang Sep 18, 2026
In fact, the new GPT-6 Astra and Fable 5.1 are already enough for transformative impact in large sections of the economy and they can reliably do weeks worth of human work when properly guided and harnessed. Blog The Overhang Sep 18, 2026
Making great things with AI means knowing which AI outputs to keep, which to discard, and which to use as raw material for something the AI would never have generated on its own. About this quote 
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