[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How much of OpenAI code is written by AI?
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Ask HN: How much of OpenAI code is written by AI?
Amidst the nascent concerns of AI replacing software engineers, it
seems a proxy for that might be the amount of code written at
OpenAI by the various models they have. If AI is a threat to
software engineering, I wouldn't expect many software engineers to
actively accelerate that trend. I personally don't view it as a
threat, but some people (non engineers?) obviously do. I'd be
curious if any OpenAI engineers can share a rough estimate of their
day to day composition of human generated code vs AI generated.
Author : growbell_social
Score : 15 points
Date : 2025-07-13 20:22 UTC (2 hours ago)
| crop_rotation wrote:
| > If AI is a threat to software engineering, I wouldn't expect
| many software engineers to actively accelerate that trend.
|
| This is a naive take. Throughout history things have been
| automated with the help of professions who were being automated
| away.
| growbell_social wrote:
| I don't disagree it's a naive take, and I would love to read
| about some examples where this happened.
|
| I haven't seen too many industries be automated away first
| hand, and I'm sure there are historic examples. I wouldn't
| expect the lamp lighters to have been championing the rise of
| electric lamps. Maybe they did though because it meant they
| could work less hours.
| iknowSFR wrote:
| Yeah, this needs to be considered down to the individual level.
| If your employer not only incentives you to go against your
| best interests but also threatens the stability of your role,
| then your choices are either do the job or accept that you
| might not be reliably employed. This is the culmination of
| decades of moving power from the employee to the employer.
| notfried wrote:
| Not OpenAI, but Anthropic CPO Mike Krieger said in response to a
| question of how much of Claude Code is written by Claude Code:
| "At this point, I would be shocked if it wasn't 95% plus. I'd
| have to ask Boris and the other tech leads on there."
|
| [0] https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-cpo-heres-
| what...
| PostOnce wrote:
| TFA says "How Anthropic uses AI to write 90-95% of code for
| some products and the surprising new bottlenecks this creates".
|
| for _some_ products.
|
| If it were 95% of anything useful, Anthropic would not still
| have >1000 employees, and the rest of the economy would be
| collapsing, and governments would be taking some kind of
| action.
|
| Yet none of that appears to be happening. Why?
| ebiester wrote:
| I don't doubt it, especially when you have an organization
| that is focused on building the most effective tooling
| possible. I'd imagine that they use AI even when it isn't the
| most optimal, because they are trying to build experiences
| that will allow everyone else to do the same.
|
| So let's take it on face value and say 95% is written by AI.
| When you free one bottleneck you expose the next. You still
| need developers to review it to make sure it's doing the
| right thing. You still need developers to be able to
| translate the business context into instructions that make
| the right product. You have to engage with the product. You
| need to architect the system - the context windows mean that
| the tasks can't just be handed off to AI.
|
| So, The role of the programmer changes - you still need
| technical competence, but to serve the judgement calls of
| "what is right for the product?" Perhaps there's a world
| where developers and product management merges, but I think
| we will still need the people.
| dude250711 wrote:
| They are likely lying:
|
| https://www.anthropic.com/candidate-ai-guidance
|
| _> During take-home assessments Complete these without Claude
| unless we indicate otherwise. We'd like to assess your unique
| skills and strengths. We 'll be clear when AI is allowed
| (example: "You may use Claude for this coding challenge").
|
| > During live interviews This is all you-no AI assistance
| unless we indicate otherwise. We're curious to see how you
| think through problems in real time. If you require any
| accommodations for your interviews, please let your recruiter
| know early in the process._
|
| He'd have to ask yet did not ask? A CPO of an AI company?
| another_twist wrote:
| Sure but what did the CTO say ? Also was he shocked ? There's
| no definitive answer, this is an evasive one.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| I absolutely believe that a large proportion of new code written
| is at least in-part AI generated, but that doesn't mean a large
| proportion of new code is 100% soup-to-nuts/pull-request-to-merge
| the result of decisions made by an agent and not a human. I doubt
| that _very_ much.
|
| I think the difference between situations where AI-driven
| development works and doesn't is going to be largely down to the
| quality of the engineers who are supervising and prompting to
| generate that code, and the degree to which they manually
| evaluate it before moving it forward. I think you'll find that
| good engineers who understand what they're telling an agent to do
| are still extremely valuable, and are unlikely to go anywhere in
| the short to mid term. AI tools are not yet at the point where
| they are reliable on their own, even for systems they helped
| build, and it's unclear whether they will be any time soon purely
| through model scaling (though it's possible).
|
| I think you can see the realities of AI tooling in the fact that
| the major AI companies are hiring lots and lots of engineers, not
| just for AI-related positions, but for all sorts of general
| engineering positions. For example, here's a post for a backend
| engineer at OpenAI: https://openai.com/careers/backend-software-
| engineer-leverag... - and one from Anthropic: https://job-
| boards.greenhouse.io/anthropic/jobs/4561280008.
|
| Note that neither of these require direct experience with using
| AI coding agents, just an interest in the topic! Contrast that
| with many companies who now demand engineers explain how they are
| using AI-driven workflows. When they are being serious about
| getting people to do the work that will make them money, rather
| than engaging in marketing hype, AI companies are honest: AI
| agents are tools, just like IDEs, version control systems, etc.
| It's up to the wise engineer to use them in a valuable way.
|
| Is it possible they're just hiring these folks to try and make
| their models better to later replace those people? It's possible.
| But I'm not sure when in time, if ever, they'll reach the point
| where that was viable.
| osigurdson wrote:
| >> new code is 100% soup-to-nuts/pull-request-to-merge the
| result of decisions made by an agent
|
| I am beginning to have more success with this in simpler parts
| of the code. Particularly if you already have a good example of
| how to do something and you need something very similar. I
| usually have to do a few tweaks but generally quite useful.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| > If AI is a threat to software engineering, I wouldn't expect
| many software engineers to actively accelerate that trend. I
| personally don't view it as a threat, but some people (non
| engineers?) obviously do.
|
| Software engineers have been automating away jobs for _other_
| people for nearly a century. It would be quite rich if the
| profession suddenly felt qualms about the process! (TBC I think
| automation is great and should always be pursued. Ofc there are
| real human concerns when change happens quickly but I am
| skeptical that smashing the looms is the best response)
| another_twist wrote:
| Software engineering has also been automating its own jobs for
| ages. The first thing we engineers do when asked to do a
| repetitive thing is find ways to automate it. I think the
| industry had qualms about losing their jobs. But honestly what
| are the examples of people losing their jobs to software ?
| Everybody says that this has happened many times yet examples
| are hard to come by.
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