Many of the current conversations surrounding AI developments are centered around the potential redundancies that advancements in the field will force, but Mark Zuckerberg has shockingly revealed an unexpected consequence of the tech that could see his coding teams halved.

Some might not be quite as optimistic about the future of AI as Microsoft founder Bill Gates, as he’s spun mass redundancies into a means of giving people freedom, predicting that people will only have to work two or three days a week thanks to artificial intelligence.

It’s certainly understandable that many remain worried that their jobs are at risk, especially as the biggest targets have been repeatedly outlined, yet AI could seemingly even come for those behind the wheel of its development.

As reported by Mashable, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has revealed a shocking vision of the future during LlamaCon’s recent closing keynote, painting a worrying picture for anyone on his coding team.

Zuckerberg initially asked Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella how much of his company’s code is currently written by AI, but that question was soon shifted back towards the Facebook founder.

He didn’t have the exact numbers to hand, but offered his vision of where he wants his company to be in the near future: “Our bet is sort of that in the next year… maybe half the development is going to be done by AI as opposed to people, and that will kind of increase from there.”

While he isn’t strictly confirming his intentions in this statement, many have taken it to be a signal of intent to get rid of at least half of Meta’s current coding staff, with AI ‘replacing’ their workflow.

However, Zuckerberg has suggested that this move would instead increase productivity, with AI supporting current staff instead of supplanting them.

“Every engineer is effectively going to end up being more of like a tech lead,” he proposed, adding that the AI writing the code will be “their own little army of agents that they work with.”

Someone will need to make sure the code is correct and what is needed, but anyone with a pessimistic outlook would quickly cast doubt on Meta’s willingness to keep on a legion of employees who are simply ‘managing’ AI that’s actually doing the work – and there’s undoubtedly a number of staff members that won’t be too happy to have their job (and skillset) taken away from them.

It also raises questions about the safety of autonomous artificial intelligence in the near future, which one Jeff Bezos-backed CEO has highlighted in particular.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has illustrated that “if AI can independently conduct R&D, that is when we must elevate our safety protocols to new levels,” so with many of the biggest tech companies handing their coding responsibilities over to AI – where its tasks would invariably include further AI development – ethical worries are bound to crop up.