Gothenburg · Wednesday, July 22
Jan Bosch

Jan Bosch

Accelerating the adoption of digital — software, data and AI — technologies in industry and society.
reflection

Who are you?

I work with quite a few software R&D teams and departments in a variety of companies and one of the common themes is that people try to understand the implications of LLMs and agentic AI on software development. And the key topic is what the role of humans is when AI agents take over part or all of the work. The key concern seems to be less about having a job and more about the identity of the people that I talk to is deeply connected to their role as a software engineer or architect. Similarly, at a recent conference, many, especially senior, researchers called for human-in-the-loop approaches rather than allowing for AI agents to act fully autonomously. And, becoming more personal, having been a professor of software engineering for close to 30 decades, I struggle with the question what the reinvention of the field means for me and whether the research I have done during these decades has now become irrelevant. The problem is that we tend to associate our identity with our professional role and, as I age, I work hard on defining my identity in other terms than my job. So, as a reflection for today: who are you?

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