AI's coding ability comes from code written by millions of programmers. Now, AI is helping programmers write code.

I've seen many experienced programmers say online that they haven't written code by hand for months. People joke that writing code by hand is "ancient programming" and should be on the UNESCO heritage list.

I'm just an ordinary programmer. Using AI to help with coding really makes things easier. It can quickly find the problem among hundreds of error messages. It can write a regular code block in one second. It can easily change your code into another programming language.

I remember back in college, my professor taught us Pascal. He said, even though this language is very old, it's the father of programming languages. Learn it, and learning other languages later will be easy. After I started working, I liked using Python because it feels close to human language. And now, I use AI to help me code — technology keeps changing and evolving. Right at this moment, a question popped into my head: If one day, all programmers stop writing code, can AI still keep evolving?

I asked AI. It was honest: No. Without new human-written code, AI cannot truly evolve by itself.

If AI only uses code it generated to train itself, it will quickly hit "model collapse." Think of a painter who only studies his own paintings, never looking at the real world or other masters' work. His paintings will all start to look the same. Details will disappear. Colors will become dull. In the end, he can only repeat simple patterns. He will never create a new style.

If programmers stop writing code, AI's coding ability will be stuck forever at that moment.

Without fresh human data, AI becomes a kind of "inbreeding" in the digital world. Humans keep their genes healthy by mixing with different groups. AI also needs fresh code written by real programmers to avoid collapse.

This problem is a lot like The Matrix. Machines run on human body electricity. AI runs on code written by programmers. The irony is that the programmers who are threatened by AI are exactly the source of AI's evolution.

Right now, AI is taking away a lot of programmers' jobs. Junior programmers are finding it harder and harder to get jobs. But don't forget — every senior used to be a junior. Without new people entering the field, there will be no programmers in the future. When that happens, AI can only wait to "die".

AI is a great helper. But we should put people first. We can't let AI kill the chance for humans to grow.