Large Language Models and The End of Programming

Please join our good friends at ACM Chicago for a Matt Welsh talk on how we may not be writing computer programs much longer.

About the talk:
The field of Computer Science is headed for a major upheaval with the rise of large AI models, such as ChatGPT, that are capable of performing general-purpose reasoning and problem solving. We are headed for a future in which it will no longer be necessary to write computer programs.

Our speaker, Matt Welsh, believes that most software will eventually be replaced by AI models that, given an appropriate description of a task, will directly execute that task, without requiring the creation or maintenance of conventional software. In effect, large language models act as a virtual machine that is “programmed” in natural language.

This talk will explore the implications of this prediction, drawing on recent research into the cognitive and task execution capabilities of large language models.

You can read more about this in his recent Communications of the ACM article, https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2023/1/267976-the-end-of-programming/fulltext

Agenda:
(Times are Central Time)
6:00pm - brief intros
6:05pm - Presentation by Matt Welsh
6:45pm - Q&A
7:00 pm - end

Note: You must register with Zoom before the live remote broadcast. After RSVP'ing on Meetup the Zoom link will become available.

About the speaker:
Matt Welsh is the CEO and Co-founder of Fixie.ai, a Seattle-based startup developing a new computational platform with AI at the core. He was previously head of engineering at OctoML, a software engineer at Apple and Xnor.ai, engineering director at Google, and a Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University. He holds a PhD from UC Berkeley.