Skip to content
Quotes.

Shawn Wang (swyx) quote, Jun 30, 2023

Editor, Latent Space · Jun 30, 2023 · Essay, The Rise of the AI Engineer

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.

Primary source

Words found on the source page on Sep 25, 2026.

More from Shawn Wang (swyx)

Quote
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.Jun 30, 2023· Essay
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.Jun 30, 2023· Essay
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.Jun 30, 2023· Essay
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.Jun 30, 2023· Essay

On the same topics

Quote
AI has removed the typing from software engineering & left the system design.Tomasz TunguzSep 24, 2026· Post
The craft of fitting code together by hand is over; what remains is designing the loop that decides whether the output is right.Tomasz TunguzSep 24, 2026· Post
This is the new software engineering: designing the systems that let AI write code correctly at scale.Tomasz TunguzSep 24, 2026· Post
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.Ben ThompsonSep 21, 2026· Post
Engineering specializations are disappearing, judgment and agency are more important, and it only takes one or two engineers for previously “impossible” rewrites and migrations to succeed.Gergely OroszSep 15, 2026· Post
Within a year, Codex has gone from a “nice-to-have” tool to being the backbone of pretty much everything at the company.Gergely OroszSep 15, 2026· Post
About this quote
Said by
Shawn Wang (swyx), Editor, Latent Space
Where
The Rise of the AI Engineer
Topics
Coding, Platform-shift
Company
Latent Space
Source
latent.space/p/ai-engineer

A quote is one moment, not the whole argument. Read it in context at the source.

Sources: the primary source linked on each quote, checked weekly. A quote is one moment; read the source. Logos via logo.dev; trademarks belong to their owners.

New quotes by email

Fridays, only in weeks with new on-the-record quotes from data and AI leaders.

Double opt-in. Unsubscribe any time.