What Do ChatGPT and AI-based Automatic Program Generation Mean for the Future of Software

Since the release of the ChatGPT interactive AI assistant it has been surprising to see some of the snide, passive-aggressive reactions from some (not all) members of the software engineering community, in the style of "it's just inference from bad data". Let's get real, folks, it is truly game-changing. Basically, if you need a program element and can describe that need, the assistant will generate it for you. There is no particular restriction on the programming language that you choose, as long as its description and enough examples are available somewhere. The code will be pretty good.