Google CEO Sundar Pichai does something unexpected to casually build web apps with AI Coding Assistants, one of Tech's biggest names.
“I wish I could do more,” Pichai said Wednesday at Bloomberg Institute of Technology in San Francisco.
“I'm just trying to build a custom webpage using a source of all the information I wanted, either with a cursor or a replica coded atmosphere. I was able to enter the location and get everything.”
The web app is “partially completed,” he added.
“Vibe Coding,” created in February by Andrej Karpathy, Openai co-founder, explains that it provides AI with a prompt to write code. As Karpathy states, developers can “give up to the atmosphere completely” and “remove even the code exists.”
The rise of vibe coding has shaken up the way people think about software development. Some engineers wondered whether AI could drive them out of work, sparking debate among investors about whether technical skills are still an essential item for startup founders.
Tech giants like Amazon embrace the vibe that codes worker productivity. Business Insider's Eugene Kim reported Wednesday that Amazon is in discussions to adopt AI coding tool cursors for employees.
It also helps technical people build apps. A block product designer who has no formal engineering training told BI that he created a dog ID app in two months through vibe coding.
“It's exciting to see you can do that now,” Pichai said. “Things have come a long way compared to the early days of coding.”
“I feel like it's so much fun to be a coder at this moment,” he added.
A Google spokesperson declined to comment further.
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Software engineers in the AI era
Pichai was asked if they still need software engineers in the age of AI coding tools.
Sentiment reflects growing consensus among some technology leaders. AI can charge developers, but it does not replace them. Instead, it shifts how jobs look, from coding boilerplates to more fluid and creative collaborations between humans and machines.
Varun Mohan, CEO of Windsurf, said in a recent podcast that if AI can take over repetitive tasks like boilerplate coding, developers will be freed by focusing on what's really important.
According to Mohan, engineering is beginning to look like a research-driven culture. This is a culture in which developers test hypotheses, evaluate them, and get user feedback. These are steps to significantly improve the product, he said.
Startups should not hire engineers to “write boilerplate code quickly.”
Other high-tech CEOs have warned about the future of engineering professions. Sam Altman of Openai says the demand for software engineers could ultimately immerse them.
“My basic assumption is that each software engineer will do much more for a while, and at some point, yeah, maybe we need fewer software engineers,” he said in March.
He also predicted that AI-driven work displacement would not occur at once, but would accelerate over time.
“It's a bit like infiltrating the economy, mostly eating things little by little, then faster, faster,” Altman said.
