GitHub CEO: Why Now Is the BEST Time to Be a Developer | Thomas Dohmke

Marina Mogilko 0:00 What would you say to coders who are learning how to code right now? This is Thomas, CEO of GitHub, the world's largest platform for developers with over 100 million users. Under his leadership, GitHub Copilot became the most widely adopted AI coding tool in history. We see big companies put a stop on hiring. In two years, do you think I would need a developer?

Thomas Dohmke 0:21 The idea that AI without any coding skills, lets you just build a billion-dollar business is mistaken, because if, if that would be the case, everyone would do it.

Marina Mogilko 0:29 He led GitHub's $7.5 billion integration with Microsoft. Now he's shaping the future of coding itself. So you're not scared?

Thomas Dohmke 0:37 The dream of software development was always that I can take the idea that I have in my head on a Sunday morning, and by the evening, I have the app in the- up and running on my phone.

Marina Mogilko 0:50 Thanks to HubSpot for sponsoring this video.

Marina Mogilko 0:53 Hey, guys, welcome to Silicon Valley Girl. We're here at Viva Technology in Paris, and I have Thomas, the CEO of GitHub. I am so excited to talk to you about what's going on in coding. First of all, let's define vibe coding. For everyone who's heard this term, and they're like, "What's, what's going on? What's happening?"

Thomas Dohmke 1:10 Ooh, that's a tough question to start with. I think the, you know, the loosest interpretation from my side is that vibe coding means you open your IDE, you know, like, like Copilot or Cursor, Windsurf, any of these, and you go into the agent mode, and you give it a task to do, and then you're just following along of what the agent proposes to you, and you run the commands. And you're mostly focused on interacting with the agent, and not so much of what the code actually is doing.

Marina Mogilko 1:39 And you don't have to-

Thomas Dohmke 1:39 Like, you're not reviewing the code all the time.

Marina Mogilko 1:41 Yeah, and you don't have to learn how to code. 'Cause I tried-

Thomas Dohmke 1:43 Yeah

Marina Mogilko 1:43 ... GitHub Copilot.

Thomas Dohmke 1:45 Yeah.

Marina Mogilko 1:45 I was just chatting with it.

Thomas Dohmke 1:46 Yeah.

Marina Mogilko 1:46 I'm like, "Create this website, do this," and then it just tells me where to put the code.

Thomas Dohmke 1:51 Yeah.

Marina Mogilko 1:51 So it starts working.

Thomas Dohmke 1:53 Yeah.

Marina Mogilko 1:53 So how complicated can the website get with vibe coding? Can I build something that has a database?

Thomas Dohmke 1:59 Yeah.

Marina Mogilko 2:00 Or is it just, like, a landing page or a very simple app?

Thomas Dohmke 2:03 My rule of thumb would be you can get as far as you're having the patience to keep prompting, because, you know, as you said, if you don't understand what the agent is actually writing, what the code looks like, well, then your only way of modifying, you know, the functionality is by figuring out how to prompt. It almost becomes a, your, your, a, a quiz-

Marina Mogilko 2:22 Art

Thomas Dohmke 2:22 ... or like a game-

Marina Mogilko 2:22 Yeah

Thomas Dohmke 2:22 ... right? Like, where you're trying to-

Marina Mogilko 2:24 Yeah.

Thomas Dohmke 2:24 "Okay, so, hmm, let me try a different approach." I like to compare this to image models, all right? You start with a simple prompt, and you render an image of Paris, and then almost certainly you get something which isn't exactly what you expected. And then you start, you know, rewriting it, and for some time there were, like, tricks to do that in, in Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, uh, by th- doing things like training on Artstation. Uh, and then you got closer to what you wanted, but at some point-

Marina Mogilko 2:47 Mm

Thomas Dohmke 2:47 ... you either run into, like, a direction where you can't keep going anymore, or you just take it and, you know, move it into Photoshop or in, in, in, in, in the world of Copilot into VS Code, and, and now you have to start learning how to code. So I think you can build a web page, you can build authentication, you can build, you know, settings pages, and things like that, but you're ultimately always going to reach a point where the complexity, uh, is, is so, um, deep, I guess-

Marina Mogilko 3:15 Yeah

Thomas Dohmke 3:15 ... you know, that you have to then understand what the code is actually doing, or you're building something and it doesn't scale, you know, and it's super slow. And now figuring out a prompt on how to m- make it fast and, you know, let's say it's a Shopify shop, and make it scale for Black Friday, that, that is when you have to be a professional developer, at least, you know, for now.

Marina Mogilko 3:35 So, um, right now we're using code to do basic things. In two years, do you think I would need a developer to build a billion-dollar company with just vibe coding, or we're still too far away from it?

Thomas Dohmke 3:48 I think you have to be a developer to be in the tech business, because what you can do with, with just the help of AI, not coding, everybody else can do as well. And as such, your business isn't really differentiated anymore from other businesses, right? Like, if I can just prompt it in five minutes and build it myself, what do I need a SaaS service that I pay a subscription for, right? And so I think the startups will build in 10x, 100x more complex things than they're doing today with the help of AI, and as such, are differentiating from those that are just vibing it.

Marina Mogilko 4:19 Mm.

Thomas Dohmke 4:19 Now, you know, there's lots of businesses where you don't have to code at all, uh, you know, like, like your, your YouTube channel, and there's many other YouTube channels where you can build out a brand and then hire a team to do a lot of these things. But I, I think the, the idea that AI, without any coding skills, lets you just build a billion-dollar business is mistaken, because if, if that would be the case, everyone would do it.

Marina Mogilko 4:42 And then everybody has a billion-dollar company, which is-

Thomas Dohmke 4:44 Which doesn't work, right?

Marina Mogilko 4:45 Doesn't work that way.

Thomas Dohmke 4:45 Like, who's paying the-

Marina Mogilko 4:46 Yeah

Thomas Dohmke 4:46 ... who's paying the money? [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 4:48 Exa- exactly. I know a lot of you guys who are watching this are dreaming of becoming tech founders, and with new AI, it's so much easier to build an app or to put your idea into action within 24 hours. And it's becoming crystal clear that AI is not just a tool, it can actually become your co-founder. But the key is how you prompt it. How do you make it think like you? Because the better you are at talking to it, the more powerful it becomes. If you want to get really good at using ChatGPT or any AI tool, I highly recommend you check out this e-book that is called Advanced ChatGPT Prompt Engineering: From Basic to Expert in 7 Days. I put the link in the description to download it for free. It's basically a step-by-step guide to teach AI think like you. So instead of just randomly prompting, you build systems that save you time. I especially love two sections: the ROSES framework, it gives you a crystal-clear formula for structuring any prompt with the right role, objective, scenario, expected output, and steps; and modular architecture, it teaches you how to create prompt components you can mix and match like Legos and save hours every week. This book is made by HubSpot Media, which is the sponsor of today's video, and honestly, I wish I had something like that when I just started using AI and started prompting by myself. Now, let's get back to our conversation.... do you think we're gonna have

Marina Mogilko 6:08 less or more developers in five years?

Thomas Dohmke 6:10 I think we are going to have way more developers-

Marina Mogilko 6:12 Way more

Thomas Dohmke 6:12 ... because it's so much easier to learn it, you know? We talked about our kids earlier.

Marina Mogilko 6:16 Yeah.

Thomas Dohmke 6:16 Kids can just get into this by using, uh-

Marina Mogilko 6:19 Right now

Thomas Dohmke 6:19 ... Copilot-

Marina Mogilko 6:19 Yeah

Thomas Dohmke 6:19 ... and then say, "Hey, how do I build a game?"

Marina Mogilko 6:21 Exactly.

Thomas Dohmke 6:22 And then they see games, you know, when they, when they go to school, when they talk to their friends, when they, you know, go to a ski lodge, and they have a Nintendo corner. And so naturally, kids, when they, uh, uh, you know, explore these, these technologies, they wanna learn it themselves. And so giving them, you know, an agent, a chat tool on the side to say, "Hey, you know, this is how you can learn coding. This is kind of how you can fix your bugs-

Marina Mogilko 6:43 Yeah

Thomas Dohmke 6:43 ... this is kind of how you can unblock yourself," right? Like, the most frustrating thing when you're learning something is you're stuck somewhere, and then you have nobody at home or in your, in your family or friends that can help you with that because they're all non-technical. So like, that's when we are- when we're saying AI is democratizing access, that's what we mean. Everyone who wants to learn it can learn it. Now, that doesn't mean, you know, everybody who wants to learn coding then becomes a professional software developer.

Marina Mogilko 7:07 Mm.

Thomas Dohmke 7:07 Right? I think there's a much bigger... going to be much bigger range between consumer developers that build their own micro apps, personalized things, you know, the-

Marina Mogilko 7:15 Yeah

Thomas Dohmke 7:15 ... Trip to Paris app to figure out, this is the places we wanna see, this is all the photos we took. And it's only valuable to you and your family or you and your friends, all the way to the professional developers that builds all these AI systems, all the agents that we see here on the show floor today. That, I think, is still going

Thomas Dohmke 7:30 to be profession, and there's going to be those- the companies that are the smartest are going to hire more developers. Because if you 10X a single developer, then 10 developers can do 100X.

Marina Mogilko 7:39 100X.

Thomas Dohmke 7:40 [laughing]

Marina Mogilko 7:40 Yeah, it feels like we're moving in- with the developing, we're moving into, like, what websites used to be 10 years ago-

Thomas Dohmke 7:46 Yeah

Marina Mogilko 7:46 ... when suddenly there are tools like Squarespace, and-

Thomas Dohmke 7:49 Yeah

Marina Mogilko 7:49 ... everyone starts having a website. So they need designers who are not too technical, who have taste. So something like this, right? When everyone has-

Thomas Dohmke 7:57 Right

Marina Mogilko 7:57 ... an ability to code an app, they will still need someone to, like, take care of it.

Thomas Dohmke 8:00 Correct. And you wouldn't start a business today where you're saying, "I'm building app- web pages for-

Marina Mogilko 8:04 Yeah

Thomas Dohmke 8:05 ... for, for small businesses," right? Like, every VC will tell you that's, that's not differentiated. There, there is no moat.

Marina Mogilko 8:10 Mm.

Thomas Dohmke 8:10 You know, that's, that's not the next billion-dollar business. That's why I'm thinking, you know, AI will generate so much bigger ideas that the same size of team can implement, or as you grow your team, you can de- do even more than those that are just using AI for cost savings.

Marina Mogilko 8:24 It's interesting when

Marina Mogilko 8:25 we talk about this, when I tell this idea to my followers-

Thomas Dohmke 8:27 Yeah

Marina Mogilko 8:27 ... like, "Hey, every team can become a lot bigger, they can deliver more," they're like, "But who's gonna buy?" [laughing] We're still gonna have the same amount of people. What do you think about that?

Thomas Dohmke 8:36 I think it's temporary, a, a, a temporary effect right now, that this is the natural conclusion for the short term. It keeps things stable, and we're trying to figure out how the market develops. But very quickly, I think we're going to see people that say, "Well, wait a second, if I have one more productive developer, why wouldn't I hire another one and another one?" And in fact, you know, AI has already added more work to the backlogs, right? Like, I haven't seen companies saying, "Well, we're draining all our backlog, and we have almost nothing left. And soon enough, AI is so powerful that all the ideas are implemented, and we're just sitting around doing nothing." I think the reality is AI, you know, all these models, all these agents, you know, the path to AGI ultimately, uh, means that we have more work to do. I said this morning

Thomas Dohmke 9:18 that I believe 90% of all code is going to be written by agents.

Marina Mogilko 9:23 Yeah.

Thomas Dohmke 9:23 And that sounds like we take away 90% of the work from developers, and they're only left with 10%. But if the total amount of code is growing by 10X, right, now the agent has 9X, and the developer still has their 1X that they had before.

Marina Mogilko 9:36 Yeah.

Thomas Dohmke 9:36 And so you can keep going with that logic, and, and you see that, you know, ultimately, those companies are successful that use AI to accelerate, not to cut costs.

Marina Mogilko 9:45 But at the same time, we see big companies, uh, put

Marina Mogilko 9:48 a sto- put a stop on hiring, and they say, like, "Hey, you need it..." to their employees, "You need to figure out how to do this with AI first before we hire someone." What do you think about that?

Thomas Dohmke 9:57 I think it's a reflection of, you know, a fast-changing market and a lot of uncertainty, uh, both, you know, in the political, uh, uh, environment and in the tech environment of where things are going. And the natural tendency to do is to go slower a little bit.

Marina Mogilko 10:11 Mm.

Thomas Dohmke 10:11 Um, and you may- might decide, you know, some people are no longer the right folks in my company for that kind of environment, where things are moving incredibly fast, where you're almost forced to use AI to keep up with the competition, right? Like, the realization I think that many companies had in the last few months is that if we have employees that say, "We don't wanna use AI," that ultimately means our- we as a company are no longer set up for success. 'Cause our competitors are all using AI, or they're mandating AI. And I think this is the transition phase we're going through, but I believe very quickly, uh, we're going to see, uh, uh, an acceleration. And you already see, you know, things like, uh, Mark Zuckerberg, uh, uh, getting the Scale, Scale AI team-

Marina Mogilko 10:51 $15 billion

Thomas Dohmke 10:51 ... into the company. It's, uh... I, I think that shows where Mark's head is and where he believes the future is going to be, and he's going- he's willing to invest into it.

Marina Mogilko 10:59 Yeah, yeah. What would you say to

Marina Mogilko 11:02 coders who are learning how to code right now? What should they focus on-

Thomas Dohmke 11:05 Yeah

Marina Mogilko 11:05 ... to be able to get a job?

Thomas Dohmke 11:07 Learn with AI. I think the, the biggest upside that young people have is that they are adopting new technology much faster than those that are in, in our day-to-day, right? Like, when you're in a day-to-day job, you have so much work, and you have all your meetings and all the emails and all the things you have to do, that you barely have any time to learn, while young people that are still in school or in college have a lot of time to learn. And often, you know, young folks are much more open-minded to explore these and, and adopt these new things. It's, you know, when you go to your parents, and you're like, "Oh, you're old," because you're listening to all this music from the past, or-

Marina Mogilko 11:41 Yeah

Thomas Dohmke 11:41 ... you're still watching linear TV-

Marina Mogilko 11:42 Yeah

Thomas Dohmke 11:42 ... and, and, and those kind of things. And I think, though, the, the next generation of developers will grow up with AI. They will- in the same way that, you know, the Gen Z, uh, uh, has grown up with, uh, with smartphones. Um, while in my generation, I didn't have a smartphone until I was, like, 20. Well, I had- didn't have a cell phone until I was, like, early 20s, and then I didn't have a smartphone until I was already in my 30s.

Marina Mogilko 12:01 Mm-hmm.

Thomas Dohmke 12:02 Right? And so I think that's- we're going to see a new generation of software developers, that for them, using an, a set of agents is, is just going to be natural.

Marina Mogilko 12:10 Yeah.

Thomas Dohmke 12:11 Just... And they're going to have that when they're writing an email. They're going to have that when they're planning a trip. Uh, they're going to have that on the trip and, of course, in their work environment, uh, across, you know, the coding a- skills, but everything else as well in, in professional life.

Marina Mogilko 12:24 Do you think everyone should try vibe coding today, or you think

Marina Mogilko 12:28 it's too early for everyone?

Thomas Dohmke 12:29 ... I think it's a- about the right time. You know, there's enough tools, um, and enough AI, uh, systems like ChatGPT and Claude that have some form of vibe coding built in, um, OpenAI launched-

Marina Mogilko 12:40 You have to copy the code, right, and insert?

Thomas Dohmke 12:42 Uh, not with, uh... OpenAI has Codex, um, which, which you know, lets you do some of those things, uh, uh, within, within the OpenAI environment or ChatGPT environment. Uh, uh, but you're right, there are some tools where you still have to know-

Marina Mogilko 12:55 How to deploy

Thomas Dohmke 12:56 ... where to put it-

Marina Mogilko 12:56 Yeah, yeah

Thomas Dohmke 12:57 ... and, and, and what a, what a GitHub repository even is, or what GitHub is, for that matter. And then there's technologies like Vercel, Viziro, uh, Lovable, Bolt-

Marina Mogilko 13:06 Right

Thomas Dohmke 13:06 ... where you can actually get, just get started without any technical background. What you also see if you, if you follow Reddit threads of people, you know, reporting on their experience is that you do- will get stuck, right? That's the nature of this-

Marina Mogilko 13:18 Yeah

Thomas Dohmke 13:18 ... is either you're not asking deep enough, or you're giving it-

Marina Mogilko 13:23 Or you just don't know what to ask

Thomas Dohmke 13:24 ... not enough problems.

Marina Mogilko 13:25 Yeah.

Thomas Dohmke 13:25 Uh, or then you're probably getting it done, but it looks crappy, or it- it's very simple, or you're going really to the, to the edge of the technology, and then you're going to get stuck if you don't know how to, how to go into the source code and make modifications.

Marina Mogilko 13:38 Yeah.

Thomas Dohmke 13:38 But yeah, I think that Manus is the other one. Manus, um, uh, uh, uh, who is, uh, this, uh, Chinese startup that, uh, uh, brought this, uh, agent, uh, to market, where you can do vibe coding in the sense of a consumer specifies what they want to build, and then it builds you this, uh, web page or web app right in the chat tool.

Marina Mogilko 13:56 Mm.

Thomas Dohmke 13:56 So you're not... You're ne- never even launching anything or deploying it or any, any of the developer activities. You're just asking it to build you a tracking for your kids' allowance or, or the trip to Tokyo or, you know, those, those kind of personalized apps that are only useful... Your, your workout tracker-

Marina Mogilko 14:12 Mm-hmm

Thomas Dohmke 14:12 ... that are only useful for you, and where you, in the past, would have downloaded an app from the App Store. And now, and now you're using, uh, such an agentic system.

Marina Mogilko 14:19 Interesting. Oh, that's, that's fascinating.

Marina Mogilko 14:22 Do you think we're going to the world where AI can generate better ideas than us?

Thomas Dohmke 14:29 I think AI can help us to generate better ideas, 'cause AI is also incredibly powerful for your own reflections. Like, you know, putting your notes into, into an AI system like ChatGPT and say, "Hey, what am I missing?" Or, "What else could I be thinking about?" Or, "If you take this and combine it with something else, what, what could come out of this?" So I think the reasoning capabilities, the cha- chain of thought that, that these AI systems have, combined with your own ideas, with your triggers, you know, with the things that you, you know, that keep you up at night because you're so excited about

Thomas Dohmke 15:03 this, I think those still come from the human, but the AI is going to help us to explore those, to put them into a pitch deck, uh, or-

Marina Mogilko 15:10 That's for the next five years. Let's talk about AGI. Do you think it's gonna be 2030?

Thomas Dohmke 15:14 Depends on, depends on how you define AGI. So you have to define AGI first.

Marina Mogilko 15:17 What, what's AGI for you?

Thomas Dohmke 15:19 I don't know. I think, you know, the, the arguments are on both sides. On the one side, you could say the models that are powering these AI agents today are already more intelligent than what you and I could do-

Marina Mogilko 15:30 Yeah

Thomas Dohmke 15:30 ... certainly in terms of how much knowledge-

Marina Mogilko 15:32 Yeah, absolutely

Thomas Dohmke 15:32 ... they have stored, um, uh, uh, you know, how they can reason over this knowledge, how they even, you know, can summarize things in, in such a short amount of time. You couldn't read, you know, a 500-page book and summarize it, so they are more intelligent or more capable-

Marina Mogilko 15:47 And they've also seen all

Marina Mogilko 15:48 of the ideas

Thomas Dohmke 15:48 ... yeah, perspectives. But they're not creative. I think emotion plays a big role-

Marina Mogilko 15:51 Mm-hmm

Thomas Dohmke 15:52 ... uh, in, in, in creativity. Um, you know, and, and they have no emotion. Even though Mr. Data on Star Trek had no emotion either, and, uh, they're not sentient. And I think if you define AGI or ASI as that, I, I don't know how long it will take because we haven't seen any research of how you can implement emotion within an, within an AI system.

Marina Mogilko 16:12 Mm.

Thomas Dohmke 16:12 And so we- we're going to be on a journey. Um, you know, Waymo in San Francisco is, is fascinating, what it is.

Marina Mogilko 16:18 Everywhere. Everywhere, yeah.

Thomas Dohmke 16:19 Well, now it's, it's coming to more cities.

Marina Mogilko 16:21 Yeah.

Thomas Dohmke 16:21 Um, uh, self-driving cars, you know, feel like AGIs. Um, I think vibe coding, to some degree, feels like AGI. Um, but if you define AGI as in it needs to have this human instinct and the human, you know, collaboration, and the, the idea in the morning of doing something completely new, I don't know how far away we are from this. It's certainly not tomorrow.

Marina Mogilko 16:43 Okay, so you're not scared, or are you? Like-

Thomas Dohmke 16:45 I'm excited.

Marina Mogilko 16:46 What's your level of... So you're not scared at all?

Thomas Dohmke 16:48 I'm not scared at all. I... You know, as long as I need, still need to remind my kids three times to empty the dishwasher [laughing]

Marina Mogilko 16:54 [laughing]

Thomas Dohmke 16:55 As long as there are no- is no robot that can actually do that, not even a prototype, I mean, you know-

Marina Mogilko 17:00 I think it's coming soon still. Like, I'm-

Thomas Dohmke 17:01 Yeah.

Marina Mogilko 17:01 There are already robots walking in Silicon Valley, like the...

Thomas Dohmke 17:04 Well-

Marina Mogilko 17:05 ... it's coming

Thomas Dohmke 17:05 ... but, like, they cannot really take a plate out of the-

Marina Mogilko 17:07 Yeah

Thomas Dohmke 17:07 ... craziness that's the dishwasher.

Marina Mogilko 17:09 But I'm-

Thomas Dohmke 17:09 Yeah

Marina Mogilko 17:09 ... I'm seeing the progress,

Marina Mogilko 17:10 how fast it happens, and I'm not even... Like, what do you teach your kids? What do you tell them? Like, what are they gonna be when they grow up? What are the skills they need to acquire now?

Thomas Dohmke 17:18 No, I grew up in, uh, East Germany before the wall fell, and I was 12 years old when Germany got reunited. And I tell them, "Look, you know, you're growing up in one of the most exciting times that I have, you know, seen in my, in my life, and there's so much technology around you." You can build a company today not only out of a garage in Silicon Valley, you can build a company out of a garage anywhere in the world. Uh, because all you need is, you know, a good internet connection, a laptop, or even a cell phone, and a bit of-

Marina Mogilko 17:46 And a developer, right?

Thomas Dohmke 17:47 ... and a bit of vibe coding. [laughing]

Marina Mogilko 17:48 [laughing]

Thomas Dohmke 17:48 Well, yeah, but you can become a developer if you want to. Everybody can now become a developer.

Marina Mogilko 17:52 Mm-hmm.

Thomas Dohmke 17:52 They don't have to get access to books and magazines and, and, uh-

Marina Mogilko 17:55 That's true

Thomas Dohmke 17:55 ... and a computer club that's only in their town, uh, or what have you. And so I think from a software developer perspective, uh, it is, it is the most exciting time that developers have

Thomas Dohmke 18:05 lived in because the dream of software development was always that I can take the idea that I have in my head on a Sunday morning, and by the evening, I have the app in the- up and running on my phone, right? And the reality today is I have the idea, and then I'm trying to figure out how do I take this problem and convert it into source code and libraries and, you know, how do I make rounded corners on a- on an iPhone app and, and, and those things. And by, by the time it's night, I haven't done anything. I have basically bootstrapped the project-

Marina Mogilko 18:35 Mm-hmm

Thomas Dohmke 18:35 ... you know, and set up a, a few things, and that was it.

Marina Mogilko 18:38 Yeah. So basically, what, what, what are you teaching your kids? Entrepreneurship?

Thomas Dohmke 18:43 ... I'm teaching them to explore the world. I'm teaching them, you know, to how to solve problems on their own.

Marina Mogilko 18:48 Yeah.

Thomas Dohmke 18:48 I'm teaching them, or they're teaching themselves how to use AI, and, um, and I think, you know, be curious and open-minded.

Marina Mogilko 18:55 I feel like you're one of the most positive people I interviewed [laughing] about AI.

Thomas Dohmke 18:59 [laughing]

Marina Mogilko 18:59 There's a lot of people like-

Thomas Dohmke 19:00 Yeah

Marina Mogilko 19:00 ... "I'm not sure. Probably 90% of the jobs-

Thomas Dohmke 19:02 Yeah

Marina Mogilko 19:02 -are gonna be gone," but you're, you're-

Thomas Dohmke 19:03 And I'm German. [laughing]

Marina Mogilko 19:04 And you're German, so it's very... It gives me hope. Um, what would be, like, the last

Marina Mogilko 19:10 advice you would give to people who are watching-

Thomas Dohmke 19:12 Yeah

Marina Mogilko 19:12 -and still have fear that AI is gonna take their job?

Thomas Dohmke 19:16 Well, I think the best fear, uh, the best way to work around the fear that you have around your job is to adopt the technology, learn about it, learn how to use it, to up- upskill yourself into whatever the next job is going to be. You know, if, if you fear that your job is going to be replaced, um, because AI can do it, uh, then the best path out of that is to become the expert in using this AI system. 'Cause there's al- I think there's always going to be a human that orchestrates, that, you know, is the conductor of all these AI agents.

Marina Mogilko 19:45 Okay, so you don't see the future where AI spots the problem, generates solution, codes-

Thomas Dohmke 19:50 Look, you know, there's reasons why we do responsible AI, why we do... You know, why we test every model, why there's security, guardrails, red teaming, or, like, you know, teams trying to hack the model, uh, figuring out what the system prompt is, doing prompt injection. That is certainly things that we need to work on, in the same way that we need to work on software security and traffic safety, and every technology that we have in life has risks and, and rewards.

Marina Mogilko 20:15 Yeah.

Thomas Dohmke 20:15 And I think we should focus, focus on the rewards when we wanna predict what the future is, and we should work on the risks on, on our day-to-day and make sure that the risks don't materialize.

Marina Mogilko 20:25 Okay. So your favorite A-

Marina Mogilko 20:27 l- what's the top three favorite AI apps?

Thomas Dohmke 20:29 Well, of course, Copilot, uh, is my number one, as we're working o- on this every-

Marina Mogilko 20:33 You use it internally as well-

Thomas Dohmke 20:35 Yeah

Marina Mogilko 20:35 ... to code the code? Yeah.

Thomas Dohmke 20:36 Yeah, everybody at GitHub. Um, not even, not only the coders, everybody's using Copilot-

Marina Mogilko 20:40 Mm

Thomas Dohmke 20:40 ... so, and product managers, designers-

Marina Mogilko 20:42 Nice

Thomas Dohmke 20:42 ... HR, legal-

Marina Mogilko 20:43 Mm

Thomas Dohmke 20:43 ... finance, everybody is using GitHub. Um, that's the nature of GitHub, is that everybody is on GitHub, um, and is on Copilot. Um, I really love, you know, ChatGPT for, like, my day-to-day, you know, o- other questions. Um, um, I have it on my Mac on, you know, Control+Space, and it just opens the toolbar, and it's, I think, more and more replacing the typical internet search.

Marina Mogilko 21:05 Yeah.

Thomas Dohmke 21:06 And, um, hmm, what's the third AI system that's my favorite? I have a, you know, certain, Granola, for example, on my app to transcribe, uh, calls.

Marina Mogilko 21:16 Mm.

Thomas Dohmke 21:17 Um, so that comes to mind, um, I f- I, I find that really useful, for example, for interviews. I think it's, uh, important to call it out to the person you're talking to, that you're, you know, transcribing the-

Marina Mogilko 21:27 Recording, yeah

Thomas Dohmke 21:27 ... the call and having AI, uh, write a summary. Um, but it's those things, and then obviously, you know, as I'm not very creative in terms of painting, and so having, you know, uh, uh, one of these models create an image for me for, for, for a PowerPoint presentation, uh, I find that, uh, super useful as well. [bell dinging]

Marina Mogilko 21:43 That's awesome. Thank you so much for being so positive about the future.

Thomas Dohmke 21:46 Yeah, thank you for having me.

Marina Mogilko 21:46 Thank you for this conversation.

Thomas Dohmke 21:47 Yeah.

Marina Mogilko 21:47 Thank you.