Developers need new skills for AI software systems: Microsoft's Nadella

TCS, Infosys, Wipro, and Cognizant to deploy over 50,000 Copilot licenses, collectively surpassing 200,000

Building modern software systems need a mindset shift of the developers that also require them to pick up new skill sets as artificial intelligence (AI) upends the software development lifecycle, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said.

 

Nadella, who was in India’s Silicon Valley, Bengaluru, during the third day of his tour to the country, also talked about how contextual engineering is similar to the “good old data engineering”, but veers away when it comes to usage of data.

 

“It is like the good old data engineering but it’s a different type of data engineering where you want your data to get into the shape that allows you to feed into the intelligence and orchestrate around it. That is how we need to think of the frontier of the classic software development life cycle (SDLC) and that has to change to a new form of AI-driven SDLC. That will be critical,” he told stakeholders in a packed gathering on Thursday.

 

Ever since the advent of ChatGPT three years ago, coding has become a lot more automated with machines writing thousands of lines of code that were previously written by engineers. While that has improved productivity, allowing coders to focus on more high-end work, it also means uncertainty of jobs at the lower end of the pyramid- young engineers who need to reskill to remain relevant or perish.

 

“Perhaps unlike any previous era of software, this one requires a rethink in even the lifecycle of how we build. We start with the spec itself, start at the other end by thinking of the evaluation loop, some say you start with the test and not the spec. It changes the inward process and requires a mindset change, you have to be a lot more grounded in the real world outcome that you want to change which requires a mindset shift of the developers and we need to pick up the skill to impact that mindset shift,” he added.

 

Microsoft India and South Asia President, Puneet Chandok, also emphasised on the need to reskill in the age of AI, cautioning that the technology will not steal jobs but unbundle it. “AI skilling is the new oxygen mask and guerrilla warfare against irrelevance. The real pink slip is our refusal to learn as this is no longer a hobby.” The return on investment in AI will be obtained through employee experience, customer engagement, reshaping business process, and innovation.

 

Microsoft also announced it partnered with TCS, Infosys, Wipro, and Cognizant to deploy over 50,000 Copilot licences, collectively surpassing 200,000, to redesign workflows around human-agent collaboration and improve productivity and efficiency across delivery, sales, finance, HR, and customer engagement.

 

India-born Nadella also cautioned on the balance that needs to be adopted between adoption of sovereign cloud and cyber security. Microsoft has launched Sovereign Public Cloud and Sovereign Private Cloud for Indian customers as part of its massive investment proposals.

 

“One important consideration in sovereignty is cyber resilience and at the end of the day, cyber security is a signal game. You cannot be sovereign and not have global intelligence. That would mean you are vulnerable. If you do not see what the threat actors across the world are doing, you will miss the signal,” he said.